


Oliver the //pseudo// Artist

by Vixx2pointOh



Series: Oliver The ... [11]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Awkwardness, Body Paint, F/M, Fate & Destiny, First Meetings, Fluff and Smut, Meet-Cute, Red String of Fate, Sexual Content, Sexual Humor, Smut, So close but yet so far, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-01-04 16:28:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18347402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vixx2pointOh/pseuds/Vixx2pointOh
Summary: Despite Oliver's intentions to recreate the habitat of a sloth, his 13yo sister had somehow convinced him to drive her in the middle of the day to what seemed like a deserted high school.He ends up in an art class, where he gets more than he bargained for.





	1. Drawing Fruit

**Author's Note:**

> This came to me in a dream... It's just a bit of fun really.
> 
> Hope you like it.  
> Xox

 

“What are we doing here again?” Oliver groaned as he pulled into the high school carpark and ran a comb of fingers through his tussled hair.

He was back home for the holidays and apparently sulking around the house in bare feet and a tee he hadn't washed in about three days was starting to drive his mother crazy. He’d done the party thing and while Oliver often prided himself on his party-hard bravado; sometimes that’s all it was – a farce – and frankly, being a shut in around his family's nearly 8,000 square foot home was quite cathartic for him in the last few weeks before college started up again.

But, despite his intentions to recreate the habitat of a sloth, his 13year old sister had somehow convinced him to drive her in the middle of the day to what seemed like a deserted high school, but for a few scattered cars of various makes and models, dotted around the stretch of concrete.

“Getting some culture,” Thea answered with a definitive role of her eyes before she stepped out from the car. “They have these great classes running every Monday.”

“And why am _I_ here?” he remarked, chomping on his words while he heaved himself out of the car with a sigh.  
“Because you're stinking out the house,” Thea called over her shoulder while she walked towards the entrance.

He would have argued the point, but it was probably an accurate observation.

**| | |**

As Oliver followed his younger sister through the glass doors of the High School, he was suddenly inundated with the sound of shuffling feet. It was surprisingly busy, with a flock of people in un-ironic berets, toting sketch pads under their arms or camo coloured messenger bags stuffed with the same. There was also an unmissable sea of tie-dyed clothes and a weirdly specific smell of lavender.

Looking around the beige linoleum halls, they looked much smaller than Oliver remembered them, and far less important as he’d once thought.

Thea took a left and Oliver dutifully followed, smiling as his trainers made a familiar squeak on the polished floor. She stopped outside a classroom and peaked in through the glass panel of the door until she found a friendly face and waved.  
“This is me,” she smiled as Oliver took a glancing look at the sign beside the door. _Pottery_.

He squinted and breathed out a silent sigh while he tugged down on the bottom of his hunter-green hoodie. _Looks like he was going to make a disfigured mug._

“What are you doing?” Thea said, stopping Oliver in the doorway while he attempted to follow her through.  
“Pottery,” he groaned, but with a puckish smile.  
She pushed him roughly back out into the hall. “No you’re not,” she argued with a hand on her hip and her eyes narrowed to little brown slits.  
“Why not?” he laughed, both at her words and her demeanour – she really was coming into that whole _teenager_ stereotype.  
“I'm embarrassed by you,” she answered bluntly. “Go find a hobby or sit in the hallway. Every class is 90 minutes long so I’ll just meet you by the car when you’re done.”  
She didn’t wait around to allow him a chance to plead his case, and when he looked through the glass panel at her taking a seat by the window; she glared at him.

He shrugged his broad shoulders as he scratched his unshaven jaw. He had 90 minutes to kill. He looked up and down the corridor where he was standing, but there wasn’t a single chair and he didn’t fancy propping himself up against a locker.

With nothing else to do, Oliver ambled down the hall, taking his first right and then his next left. Soon enough he found himself in what he remembered as the English block and a few feet away from an old classroom of his.

A precursory glance at the note by the door said ' _Drawing_ '. He missed the word above it.

Peeking in through the glass panel he saw a circle of easels and sketch pads, with a fruit bowl on a stool in the middle of them and he laughed, accidentally loud. So loud in fact that it echoed through the door and turned a few of the heads of the handful of people inside.

As one older lady with a denim skirt and a handmade headscarf looked towards him, she stepped a little to the side, revealing another curious face behind her.

A cascade of golden hair that bounced off her slender shoulders, a red wrap dress with tiny white flowers highlighted an alluring figure of perfect curves, and, to top it all off, a stunning smile brightened her porcelain face.

“Wow,” he mumbled to himself.  
Before his brain got control of his limbs, his hand had opened the door and his feet had carried him into the room until he was stopped just in front of her.

Up close she was even prettier, happy blue eyes danced behind two-toned glasses and the apples of her cheeks wore a natural blush that looked like an iridescent dusting of rubies.

“Are you here for the class?” she asked sweetly and Oliver nodded like a bobble-toy while he tried, fruitlessly, to find the suave Oliver that for some god-unknown reason, had taken an unauthorised leave of absence.

“You can just pick a spot, the teacher will be here soon,” she chattered, an almost shy laugh dancing up from her lips and into her eyes. There was something so unmistakably beautiful about her effervescence.  
He pointed to the easel he was standing in front of and smiled impishly – _finally, Suave Oliver had returned._ “Is this one taken?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied as she looked around the room.  
Oliver instinctively followed her gaze around the 10 or so people in the room. They were all older than Oliver and the woman beside him and mostly all women, except for the one man in his 40s who was studiously drawing the spikes of the pineapple in the fruit bowl, and another man with a greasy ponytail who looked at least 60 who was carefully checking the tips of his art pencils.

“You enjoy art then?” she questioned with quizzical eyes.  
He blinked down at his shoes before answered vaguely, “I dabble. A pseudo student of the arts.”  
She smiled and it blossomed into her irises.

If one counted compulsory art class at high school and his mother dragging him to a few charity events at art museums as _dabbling_.

“Do you have your pencils?” she asked and Oliver shrugged sheepishly.  
“I left them at home,” he replied.  
He watched her fidget with her hair and hold a breath at least three times; she was nervous.  
“I think there are spare pencils over there,” she offered as she pointed towards a table pushed up against the wall.

“Great thanks,” Oliver said with a wink before he strutted over to the table and collected the sharpest looking pencils; having not a single clue why there were so many different ones.

_A pencil was a pencil._

“So do you come here often?” he asked once he’d walked back and placed his selected pencils on the easel’s tray.  
She swallowed a small breath of air as she bounced on her bare feet. He hadn’t noticed she had been standing on her tiptoes before and when she lowered to her flat feet she was a good head and a half shorter than him. Like her smile, her size was endearing and he found himself imagining taking her to bed and shadowing over her, kissing every inch of that 5’5 body.

“Every week,” she answered, shaking Oliver out of his illicit day dream.  
“You seem nervous?” he commented and she laughed with a bubble that lifted her shoulders.  
“You’d think it would get easier right?” she smiled, her head tipped a little to one side.  
“I can’t wait to see what you do, I’m sure it’ll be great.”  
She nodded, a slow sort of bob, as her eyes tweaked like she wasn’t entirely sure what he meant and Oliver decided he would lighten the mood with a quip. “If you show me yours I’ll show you mine,” he chuckled, referring to the picture he intended to draw of the fruit bowl sat in front of them.

She took a step back and a wash of confusion blanched her expression, but before Oliver could clarify what he meant the door opened and a woman wearing her glasses on a chain and an ankle length paisley dress floated into the room.

She clapped her hands cheerfully together. “I’m Mavis, welcome to life drawing,” she announced as people took their places. Oliver glanced to his left, expecting to see the girl whose name he hadn’t yet gotten around to getting, but instead he was met with the toothy glare of the older gentleman with the ponytail.

His eyes scouted the room in search of the beauty and they soon found her, sans glasses, rocking on her feet as she hovered near the fruit bowl.

Wait, the words had floated over his head the moment the teacher had said them, but they came back like a slap across his cheek. _Life drawing_. Mavis had said _life_ drawing.

He snapped back to reality just as Mavis was finishing her speech, “…I really want you to focus on the shapes you see, let your pencil be an extension of your hand and glide over the paper, and as always, let’s show respect for our model, Felicity.”

Felicity smiled graciously and Oliver swallowed his tongue before his jaw fell open.

He watched her like it was in slow-motion as she twisted her torso just enough to reach her slight and nimble fingers to the tiny little bow at her waist. She plucked one of the strings and the knot popped as angels chorused in his head. He blinked as she shyly worked the scarlet fabric off her milky shoulders.

She inconspicuously wet her lips and kept her eyes focused on the deep-oak stool in front of her while the dress floated like a cloud down her arms.

And then she was naked.

No bra. No nudity pasties. _Nothing_.

Tendrils of silky honey-toned hair cascaded over her shoulders and gauzily covered her nipples, but peeks of the dusty pink tips were still visible with every breath that she took. He was almost too scared to look down from there, afraid of what noises might come out from his body. He might have been 23 on paper, but the way he could feel his pulse racing and the inferno up the back of his neck, he felt more like a 15 year old seeing breasts for the first time.

But, as Felicity moved, Oliver had no fight left in him and his eyes wandered down the milky slopes of her figure; a soft stomach and a perfectly nipped in waist swanned out into full hips and shapely thighs, but he didn’t see… _that_. Oliver, upon further scrutiny realised that she was wearing _something_. A tiny little g-string that almost perfectly matched her skin tone and just _barely_ covered her sloping mound.

She caught his eyes as she lifted herself onto the stool and Oliver whimpered under his breath.

He wasn’t _new_ to naked women, not by a mile, but there was something so pure and perfect and _utterly_ fixating about her in that moment. Oliver was also fairly certain that he wasn’t supposed to be entertaining the thoughts that were ping-ponging around his brain. _Was he the only one seeing this?_

He blinked away, nervous that his eyes would give him away, and when he looked back, Felicity was sitting on the stool, one leg perched on top of the other, swaying it innocently as she settled into the seat.

“Now it’s important that you find a pose that your model is able to keep, so you need to make sure you have good communication with her, or him,” Mavis chatted and Oliver was acutely aware she was walking behind him. “Do you have a pose in mind for our lovely model?” she asked, her hand on Oliver’s shoulder.  
“Uhhh,” Oliver sweated bullets as his mind became a puddle of nonsensical sounds. “However she is comfortable, I guess.”  
A soft chuckle came from the teacher’s mouth. “How very chivalrous of you, but she is here for a job and you are here for your craft, so you need to know what you want and ask for it.”

He fisted the pencil in his hand.  
He knew what he wanted.

Oliver took a breath in an attempt to try and keep his raging hormones at bay. “Could you, uh, move to the edge of the stool.” She moved as he spoke and Oliver tried to keep this thinly veiled composure he’d found. “Maybe uh, arch your back and put your arms behind you.”

Felicity did as was asked of her and, as her head tipped over her shoulder to check where her hands could fit, her hair fell backwards and exposed her pert, round breasts and their perfectly rose-tipped nipples.

“Like this?” she asked softly as she lifted her shoulders and arched her back.  
It took everything in Oliver not to moan.  
“Uh maybe,” he started as he noticed a slight grimace on her face; she wasn’t comfortable in that position.  
“You can go up there and move your model too, sometimes this is a better way,” Mavis continued as she nudged Oliver’s elbow.  
He wandered up there with a crinkled brow.  
She smelled like coconut oil and lemon grass and a tiny, simplistic moan dripped from his lips before he could stop it. But, if she heard it, she didn’t show it.

“Do you mind?” he asked gently, while one hand hovered above her. Felicity smiled genuinely as she shook her head.

He took her right hand first and draped it carefully over her stomach, letting the fingers splay naturally down her silken thigh.

Her skin was like velvet to his careful touch and as his finger drew a ghosted line down her left shoulder, touching her seemed like the most natural thing he'd done all day. He softened her taut arm by bending her elbow a fraction and the relief showed in the breathy sigh that passed over her softly pouted lips.

He brushed her hair off her shoulder, resisting a moment's urge to move the more stubborn strands back with a blow of warm breath. The tips of his fingers grazed the back of her neck as he exposed it's slender beauty to the room while his other hand carefully lowered her chin towards her naked shoulder until it hung there comfortably. He fixed her hair over her right shoulder, letting a soft barrel-wave tumble over her right breast.

“Are you comfortable?” Oliver asked, barely above a whisper; she was the only person in the room he was talking to.  
She looked up at him, her eyes a beautiful kaleidoscope of blues. “Yes.”  
“That's it, hold that please,” he breathed, the wingtips of his lips lifting up into a kindly smile.

She nodded, barely, as Oliver stepped backwards.

“Flawless, ethereal, beautiful elongation of that arm and the threads of her neck,” Mavis enthused as she plucked a 8B from a pocket in her maxi dress and handed it to Oliver.

“Oh I have one,” he remarked.  
“That,” Mavis snipped as she plucked the 2H pencil from his grip, “is for writing shopping lists, this,” she continued putting her pencil in his hand, “is for drawing.”

He shrugged sheepishly before she moved away. “You may start,” she cheered.

**| | |**

20 minutes later and Oliver had basic shapes drawn onto the paper in front of him. It wasn't art, not even close, but he was simply thankful it didn't resemble feral chicken scratches.

He'd kept one eye on Mavis while she roamed through the room and so his entire body clenched when she, once again, stopped behind him.

“Ahh the breasts,” she casually remarked over his shoulder as Oliver hovered the pencil above the light curves he'd sketched. “You have a great shape,” she commended, “but do you see the way the light hits her?”

He nodded without looking up, but his answer was not enough for Mavis. “Under her breast, do you see?”  
He coaxed his head up until he was looking at Felicity's pert, handful of breast with the bashfully pink tips. They were budded and her rosy skin around it was lightly creased like she was cold. She had perfect breasts. They sat high on her delicate frame, in an ever so slightly paler tone than the rest of her creamy complexion. They looked soft to the touch and he could only imagine how her dusky pink nipple might turn a deep crimson with some attention.

“The shadows,” Oliver remarked without blinking.  
“Perfect! They're rich and deep, use your pencil to lick the paper. Stroke it like your finger would,” Mavis gleefully encouraged.  
Oliver gulped as his chest tightened and his cock began to ache. He could imagine running his finger gently around the curve of her breast or soothing his thumb over its crest. He would go slow, devouring every inch while he watched tiny, panted breaths trickle from her wet lips.

 _Fuck_.  
He shifted from one foot to the other as the throbbing bulge in his jeans became increasingly demanding. He focused on the paper, sweeping the tip of the pencil down the strokes of her chest, imagine each stroke as he took it. He wet just the tip of his middle finger and passed it through the charcoal grey, smudging it into a haunting shadow at the cusp of her breast.

Blood siphoned from the rest of his body down to his engorged cock, now straining behind the double-stitched seam, as he imagined her slender fingers lazily dragging down his chest while he drew them delicately poised against her thighs.

Oliver became engrossed in the image of her, pulling and encapsulating facets that held his attention; the perfect dip of her cupids bow, the soft curtain of her hair, and the arch of her back. He dare not look at the picture as a whole, but rather Oliver was lost in the details of her.

Time moved without his knowledge and before he could fathom, it had been 90 minutes and Mavis had taken Felicity her dress and a ripe green apple from the fruit bowl.

With a demure smile Felicity slipped off the stool while she held her dress across her bare chest, she had been sitting practically naked in front of nearly a dozen people but the sudden flash of shyness was a glimpse into her nature; and Oliver yearned to know more.

 _Would you like to go for coffee?_  
_My name is Oliver?_  
_Could I get your number?_

Line after line bombarded Oliver as he waited for his chance. Felicity had shrunk around behind a bi-fold screen and the class was echoing with the sound a of people packing up.

Just as she emerged, dressed in the same simple red dress, now with her hair piled into a bun at her crown, her glasses back on, and a backpack with the MIT logo slung over one shoulder, Oliver readied himself to make his move.

She glanced up from the phone in her hand and Oliver managed a smitten smile which Felicity returned with a soft smile of her own.

But he only made it one step before a hand caught his shoulder.

“Was this your first time?” Mavis asked as she turned him around.  
“Uh, yeah,” Oliver shrugged as he tried to glance back over his shoulder to see Felicity.  
“You have a natural gift.”  
“Thanks.”  
“The way you posed her was quite beautiful.”

He could have posed her any way and she would have been beautiful regardless, but Oliver took the compliment with a gracious “Thank you.”

“The shadowing on her breast is quite exquisite.” Mavis touched a finger to Oliver's pad. “She looks so serene.”

His drawing didn't have a face, aside from her full lips, and her legs faded away into nothing, but it wasn't half bad.

“Stunning, such promise.” With that Mavis moved on to the next student, heaping similar praise on a drawing far superior.

He heard the door close and Oliver spun around just to see a flicker of blonde hair pass in front of the glass panel.

 _Shit_.

He moved in a lumbered lurch towards the door and pulled it open just as Felicity disappeared to the left.

“Wait your picture,” he heard from back in the classroom.  
_Fuck_.  
He darted back into the room and tore the paper from the easel before he sprinted down the hall.

He turned left.

Into a maze of tie dye.

He lifted onto his toes and scanned the heads of everyone as he began to jostle through. She was just ahead of him, talking on her phone.

He pushed through the oil painting class as it spilled into the corridor and he took the same left she had taken but that hall was completely deserted.

The door into the courtyard was just slowly closing ahead of him. Oliver dashed towards it and burst out into the mid-afternoon sun.

There were people all walking in different directions but he didn't see her.

She was gone. But...

 _How often do you come here?_  
_Every week._

Every week.

**|||The End|||《《《《LOL, APPARENTLY NOT**

 


	2. Finding Hay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently I said "the end" and y'all were like, nope.
> 
> This chapter is short for me, but my Twitter timeline was so vv sad that I thought something fun and (un)angst? (In my books anyway) might be in order.
> 
> Here's to you EmBett. You gave us Felicity, and boy were we lucky.

Oliver shuffled his shoulders in the charcoal-toned Henley as he scoured his reflection in his bedroom mirror. Another comb through his freshly clippered – but not too short – haircut and he set the comb to the side of his nearby dresser, replacing it with a bottle of cologne.

It was Monday again.

An entire week had gone by at a snail’s pace to Oliver; but it was _finally_ Monday again.

He glanced over to his writing desk where he has stashed away the ‘not-half-bad, but definitely not a masterpiece’ drawing of Felicity from the Monday before. He wasn’t sure whether the class would continue where it left off or whether each class was a chance for a new pose, a new drawing; but either way he’d decided he would be prepared.

After one final glance in the mirror to check for unexplainable stains on his dark-wash jeans, or a hideous hump growth on his back that might have sprung up overnight, Oliver collected the parchment from the bottom drawer and carefully ravelled it up into a tube, which he fastened with an elastic band he’d pilfered from his father’s study the night before.

He chuckled to himself, utterly aware of just how… _pubescent_ … he seemed in that moment. Barely a reflection of the usually charismatic and suave playboy he’d carefully carved out a reputation for being over the course of the last 8 odd years since he’d actually hit puberty, but there was just something about Felicity that made him feel less like that and more like a kid with an insatiable crush.

All jokes aside though; there was something different about Felicity, in the few moments he’d spent watching her he knew it, and maybe that was worth giving a chance to.

He tucked the drawing judiciously into his backpack and left the room.

He found Thea lounging on the couch with the TV at nearly full volume (playing reruns of some terrible reality show) and her phone in her hand. Her head was lying flat on the middle seat of the couch and her legs were draped over the arm rest; and if he wasn’t mistaken, she was still in her pyjamas.

“We need to leave in ten minutes?” Oliver announced as he trudged into the room.  
Thea looked up from her phone for barely three seconds before she looked back at the small screen. “Leave for where?” she mumbled as she blindly searched the floor for the packet of Nacho Cheese Doritos she’d discarded there earlier.  
Oliver found the TV remote on the coffee table and muted it with a sigh. “Pottery class,” he answered, a little fluster in his voice piquing Thea’s attention enough that she put the phone down and looked up.  
“That was last week,” she answered with one cocked brow.  
“It’s every week you said,” Oliver retorted.

His younger sister sat up, almost kicking the bag of chips over as she flung her feet down from the arm of the chair.

“It was boring, we’re not going this week,” the young Queen answered before her lips tightened into a suspicious pout.  
“You said it was getting culture, you shouldn’t give up.”  
“I said _you_ needed culture, I’m getting culture,” Thea answered with a smirk as she nodded towards the now-muted TV.  
“Re-runs of Jersey Shore are not _culture_.”  
“Pop culture.”  
“Still not a real thing.”  
“Why the sudden interest in what I fill my brain with?”  
Oliver felt his jaw aching with tension. “You’re my sister.”  
“I’ve been your sister for 13 years, you never gave a fuck any other time,” she laughed.

“Mom doesn’t like you swearing in the house.”  
“Mom’s not in the house, and since when do you care? Who are you and what have you done with my sloven brother?” Thea quipped as she sat straighter and eyed him suspiciously.

Oliver checked his Piaget SA watch and huffed out an irritated sigh. He _could_ go by himself, he didn’t need his sister to be an unknowing wingman, but the truth was it sounded a lot less creepy to work into the conversation that he was at a drawing class because his teenage sister was nearby taking a wholesome pottery class. It made him relatable, down to earth, caring – girls liked that. Girls might be more inclined to say yes to a coffee date after class if the guy asking was responsible. Or at least that’s what Oliver had spent the last week concocting in his head.

“It’s fine,” he finally mumbled; he’d figure something else out. “Enjoy your pop culture.” He unmuted the TV and dropped the remote on the couch beside her.

Thea switched it off before he’d reached the doorway and scampered after him. “Okay, okay,” she laughed, “I’ll go. Give me five minutes to change.”

Thea returned, ready to go, 10 minutes later.

**|||**

  
The traffic was on their side as Oliver embarked on the shortest route possible to the High School. With her feet on the dash and a pink bubble growing out from behind her lips, Thea glanced back to the backpack Oliver had carefully rested on the back seat.

“What’s in the bag?” Thea asked; her lips smacked as she chewed her bubblegum.  
“Nothing,” Oliver shrugged as nonchalantly as he could.  
“Uhuh,” Thea hummed before she leaned through the gap in the front seats and snapped up his bag before Oliver could even flinch.  
She pulled the rolled up parchment from the bag as the car slowed to a stop at a red light. “What’s this?” she quizzed, squinting one eye to try and look down the tube.  
“It’s nothing,” Oliver hissed as he attempted to grab the drawing without crumpling it in his fist; but the light went green before he could and an impatient toot from behind had him needing to move on.

“Look it’s just a drawing from the last time, okay, I was hoping to finish it today.”  
“A drawing?” Thea peppered him with an inquisitive look, “you actually went to a class?”  
“I did. Now could you please put it back.”  
“What’s it a picture of?”  
“Nothing.”  
“So this is a blank sheet of paper you’re sweating bullets over?”  
“Just put it back.”  
“Who is she?”  
Oliver snapped his head to look at Thea, assuming she’d unravelled the picture. But she was still holding it just as he’d left it.  
“Was she in the class with you, or was she teaching it?” She paused only long enough to catch her breath before the next question. “Is she pretty?” Thea answered that one herself, “Of course she’s pretty, it’s you. But is she like _actually_ pretty not like makeup and short skirts pretty but like _actually_ …”  
“I get it,” Oliver interrupted. “Her dress wasn’t short,” he added with a smile he couldn’t hide.  
“So, was she in the class?”  
He nodded half-heartedly; _she was in the class._  
“Not the teacher? Because if this is a whole Mrs Robinson thing then I want no part of it, Mom will kill you.”  
“It’s not, and how do you know what Mrs Robinson is?” Oliver quizzed, shifting his gaze momentarily from the road to his sister in the passenger seat.  
“I told you,” she shrugged before she blew, and popped, a bubble. “I’m cultured.”

“How old is she?” Thea asked as Oliver slowed at a give way.  
He thought for a moment before he answered sheepishly that he didn’t know.  
“What if she’s underage?” Thea shrieked and the car lurched an inch forward from the sudden jolt of her voice.  
“She’s not,” Oliver answered bluntly.  
“How do you know? Did you check?”

She certainly didn’t _look_ under 18, and _surely_ if she was posing practically naked for a room full of people she would have to be 18 or over to do so. _Right_? Oliver settled himself with a deep breath. He was absolutely certain she was at least 18. Plus the bag – she had an MIT bag. So she was at college.

He nodded away to himself; of at least that he was sure.

“What’s her name?”  
“Felicity.”  
Thea ruminated her gum for a few noisy moments, “Cute name. Where is she from?”  
When he didn’t answer immediately, Thea chimed up again, “You don’t know do you?”  
He still had no answer.  
“Did you even talk to her?” she teased, pinching his arm.  
“We talked.”  
“Duh, hi, I’m Oliver, you pretty girl,” Thea mocked, sounding like a Neanderthal.  
“Shut up.”  
“So you need me to make it look like you’re not some sort of crazy stalker?”  
“Something like that, and I’m regretting my decision to bring you along.”  
A sound like _pfft_ came out from Thea’s mouth.

Then he heard the very distinctive sound of the elastic band snapping. He looked over just in time to see the rolled up paper open like a flower on his 13 year old sister’s lap.

He could have predicted the words from her mouth. He knew they were coming, and he knew exactly what they would be.

“Holy Shit?! Is this her? Is she NAKED?” Thea screamed, loud enough that the driver in the car travelling alongside them looked into their car.  
“Can you, just,” Oliver flailed his hand towards Thea, but she moved out of his reach with the picture fully unravelled in front of her gaping mouth.  
“You went to a _life_ drawing class?”  
“Not intentionally,” he groaned.  
“And now you want to see her again? No wonder.”  
“It’s not like that,” Oliver huffed, hearing the innuendo in his sister’s voice. Sure, he was attracted to Felicity – he wasn’t a eunuch – but there was also something else, something different, something that wasn’t just physical. Something he wanted to know about her. Something he wanted to learn. And it had nothing to do with whether she was naked or not.

“What is it like then?” Thea retorted, turning the picture in her hands as though she needed to look at it from different angles.  
He sighed, unsure how to word it any other way. “She’s different.”  
“Because she took her clothes off without you needing to buy her a drink?”

Oliver pulled into the driveway of the School and slammed on the brakes, making Thea jolt forward. “It’s not like that,” he said with a stiff jaw and an unsmiling expression.  
“Okay,” she said softly, slightly impressed at her brother’s chivalrous jump to this Felicity’s defence; not that she would ever tell _him_ that.  
“Could you please just roll it back up,” he sighed as he took his foot off the brake and drove slowly towards a park.  
Wordlessly, Thea did as he asked and took the elastic from her hair to secure the drawing.

**|||**

Oliver paused outside the same classroom he’d taken Thea to the week before and gestured her inside with a sweep of his arm.

“I’m not going in there,” Thea remarked with an unbothered shrug.  
Oliver sighed, he had the makings of a headache that came in the form of his younger sister. “That’s your pottery class.”  
“And I told you none of my friends were going, so _I’m_ not going in _there_.” She folded her arms around her svelte chest and smiled. Smug.  
“Then what are you going to do Thea? You can’t wander around the campus,” he grumbled as he instinctively rubbed his thumb into his temple.  
“I’m going to your class.”  
His eyes shot open. “No, you’re not.”  
“Why?”  
“You’re not.”  
“She doesn’t have anything I haven’t seen after a shower you know.” Oliver visibly cringed at the thought. “Well, it’s true.”

He started to walk away but she was soon running along beside him.  
“Come on, I’ll behave,” she pleaded. “This could be great for you, I can be quite charming when I need to be you know. People love me.”  
He looked at her with disbelief.  
She followed him down the hall and to the right, though she was having to take two steps to keep up with one of his strides. “It’s true,” she hummed, “I can be very persuasive.”  
He took the next left; she followed, and before he’d had a chance to lose her along the way, he was standing outside the same classroom he’d stumbled upon a week ago, with a kaleidoscope of butterflies doing gymnastics in his stomach.

He turned to Thea and put on his most authoritarian voice. “You can’t come in. Go back to your pottery class or sit in the corridor, but you’re not coming in. That’s final.”

Mavis appeared, like a stealth predator, from behind them startling Oliver just enough for his grim expression to falter.  
“Inside, inside,” she said cheerily, completely oblivious to Oliver’s laying down of the law.  
“She’s only 13,” Oliver said smugly; sure that Mavis, _wonderfully free spirited, but not looking for a lawsuit, Mavis,_ would shoo Thea away instantly.

“No problem, all are welcome,” Mavis answered sweetly, the floral scent of her hair almost overpowering as she shuffled them both through the door.

Oliver didn’t have time to argue as his eyes dotted around the room. Mostly familiar faces, a few that he didn’t recall seeing the week before; but no Felicity. No sweet blue eyes and softly blushed smile.

 _Maybe she was behind the slatted room divider?_  
His mind swirled as he absently took an empty easel and Thea took the one beside him.  
“Where is she?” Thea leaned over and whispered but Oliver swatted her away.

“Today we will work on hands, they’re delicate and intricate and they, like the eyes, can be a window into a painting, give the audience a real understanding of something deeper going on. Are the hands small? Stubby? Delicate? Bruised? These are all things which tell a story off the parchment.”

Oliver nodded along, but he wanted Mavis to hurry up.  
“Study the model’s hands, tell me their story,” Mavis gestured towards a woman that wasn’t Felicity and the dark-haired, thin woman with angled features sat on a chair and placed her hands, flaccid, on the stool. That wasn’t Felicity.

“She doesn’t look _anything_ like your drawing,” Thea whispered.  
That wasn’t her.

**|||**

90 minutes later and Oliver had a picture that resembled turned up chicken feet without any gradient to the pencil lines or any shading in the creases. Thea’s was reasonably impressive but Oliver just didn’t have the heart to try. That wasn’t Felicity. That was a woman near his own age that Mavis called Lauren. She was pretty, probably, but she wasn’t Felicity.

He didn’t even bother taking his picture off the easel as he walked, solemn, towards the door.  
“Aren’t you going to ask where she is?” Thea prodded as she walked half a pace behind.  
“Nope,” Oliver sulked. It had been stupid and pathetic to even go there hoping to find her or start, _something_ , and he knew that now.

Thea groaned insolently before she turned and walked back into the class and up to Mavis.  
“There was another model in here last week,” she started and Mavis’ smiled lifted.  
“Oh yes, Felicity, beautiful hands that one. Such a lovely young lady. Very smart,” Mavis remarked as though Thea had asked more than she had.  
“Will she be back next week?”  
Mavis dropped her head to one side and shook it sorrowfully. “I’m afraid not dear, she had to head back home.”  
“Oh,” Thea casually remarked, settling back onto the heels of her black Converse. “Where’s home for her?”  
She waited with baited breath to see whether Mavis would answer. And, surprisingly, she did – well mostly. “Boston I think dear. But don’t worry, we’ll have Lauren back again…”

Thea skipped backwards and waved. “Thanks, okay, bye, great class, love your work,” she called before she skidded from the class. She jogged to catch up to Oliver, and stopped him as she pulled back on the crook of his elbow. “Did you hear that?”  
“Yes,” Oliver remarked dryly, “I heard she wasn’t going to be here next week.”  
Thea rolled her eyes dramatically. “Not that part you great big lumberjack, the part about where she lives.”  
“Boston,” he shrugged.  
“ _Boston_ ,” Thea emphasised, as though that made all the difference.  
“A 5 and a half hour flight. Home of the Red Sox. Baked beans and Fenway Park. So what?”  
“So that’s where she is.”  
“I already knew that, she had a MIT backpack.”  
Thea slapped his arm three times. “You could have saved me asking like a weirdo then.”  
“You did that on your own,” Oliver bickered.  
“So go find her.”

Oliver laughed as he started to walk away. “You’re crazy.”  
“What’s so crazy about that?”  
“I don’t even know her last name.”  
“Come on, take a chance Oliver,” Thea requested, gone was the snark and the sass, replaced instead by a genuine smile.  
“That’s nuts,” he muttered under his breath.  
“What a great story if it works out though,” she tipped one shoulder up towards her cheek.

He contemplated the idea with furrowed lips and a crinkled brow until he sighed and shook his head. _He couldn’t._

Thea caught him a second time by the arm.  
“Look, I’ve seen a flock of basically the same girl lining up outside your bedroom door for like 3 years, and I don’t even want to think about the state of your sheets at College, but I’ve never seen you as nervous as you were at home, or as cute as you were when you said her name, so all joking aside, I think you should go for it.”  
“Fly to Boston?”  
“Find the girl.”

**|||**

  
_Fly to Boston. Find the girl._  
Oliver had replayed that mantra over in his head the entire flight to Boston, the taxi ride to his hotel, and through check in until he was sitting, perched on the edge of a super-king sized bed looking out the window of his deluxe room, realising he had no idea where to even start.

He hadn’t given it much thought before then.  
He’d told his parents that afternoon and was on a flight that night. It was now a little after midnight and he was staring out the 15th storey window realising just how expansive Boston was.

He had a name; Felicity.  
And a school; MIT.

That was it.

 _Oh_ , and a really badly drawn faceless picture of her that he couldn’t use to identify her _at all._

This wasn’t finding a needle in a haystack.  
This was finding the right strand of _hay_ in a haystack.

How he’d let his 13 year old sister talk him into this was mindboggling.

He huffed loudly, almost a groan from the pit of his stomach, as he fell back into the thousand-count embrace of the exquisite linen.

He closed his eyes and left them shut to rest while he breathed deeply; this was some sort of crazy expedition that would, likely, end up with him, tail between his legs, going home in a weeks’ time, thinking about a girl he’d probably never see again.

 _Felicity_.

He groaned violently as he flung his arms across his face. _What if that wasn’t even her real name?_

This was utterly, entirely, completely, ridiculous.

 _And yet;_ a smile took the corners of his lips, tipping them upward. Maybe it wasn’t so crazy after all?

 

**||not the end||**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chat in the comments, it inspires me (say that in Mavis' voice!)
> 
> Follow me on the Twitter or its no-porn allowed cousin, Tumblr @someonesaidcake


	3. Running Late

_**** _

_**“An invisible thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, and circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle. But it will never break.”**_  – Ancient Chinese Proverb.

 

Oliver woke the next morning with no more clarity than he’d gone to bed with the night before. He’d spent 10 minutes between the sheets staring at the reflection of the morning light on the ceiling trying to convince himself this was a good idea. He spent another 10 minutes on the edge of the bed with his head between his hands thoroughly convinced that it was a terrible idea. The 10 minutes spent in the shower consisted of pepping himself up to the idea that luck was on his side and serendipity would be his friend.

After he’d dried off in the bedroom, he spent 5 minutes packing to go home, because fate wasn’t real and serendipity was just a movie with Kate Beckinsale.

But then his cellphone buzzed on the bedside table. The message was from Thea and it simply read “Good luck.”

Maybe it was absolute insanity to search a City for a girl he barely knew; and in 5 days no less, but he didn’t have anything to lose. _Maybe his dignity,_ but he was certain that would eventually grow back.

So, after another 10 minutes Oliver closed the door to his hotel room and set off.

First stop, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

**| | |**

  
Oliver watched the city fade into the rear view as his taxi drove down the lush tree-lined roads with the meandering Charles River alongside, glistening in the mid morning sun. Flocks of young adults stood in clusters or walked in near perfect sync.

He'd once considered Boston as a college destination; Boston University had given him a space, but he had preferred the pull of California, which now saw him finishing up his final semester of a business degree from Berkeley.

How different things might have been if he'd made different choices.

The driver pulled alongside the curb and Oliver quickly paid him, leaving a tip. It might have been hopeful-thinking not asking the driver to wait and that somewhere in this bustling top tier university he might find just one woman... But maybe lady luck was feeling generous today.

While he still had a week before classes started, it seemed MIT had already begun theirs, and Oliver found himself in a crowd of students, carried on their wave into the courtyard.

He stopped in the grassy sprawl of Killian Court and looked around, suddenly aware of what an absolutely crazy task he'd set himself.

 _Shit_. He hadn't thought this through. Was he actually going to rock up to the visitor's centre and ask for the class timetable of a girl he only knew by first name? No one in their right mind...

He stumbled backwards a few steps and straight into the path of a raven-haired girl with waifish arms and a nervous smile.

The book she was carrying dropped from her hands and Oliver quickly stooped to collect it. He brushed off the cover of the Advance Psychology text book before he handed it back to her. “Sorry about that,” he grimaced. “I just realised what a crazy mistake I was making.”

She looked at him wordless, before she pushed her glasses a little higher up the bridge of her nose. “Coming here?” she asked.  
He shook his head but it soon morphed into a nod. “Yes and no, not like coming _here_ -here, but _coming_ here.” Oliver groaned to himself; he wasn't making a scratch of sense.

She tapped her finger on top of the text book and Oliver quickly noted the look of a therapist glinting behind her eyes.

“I'm looking for someone,” he remarked, “And I just realised it’s probably an impossible task.” He turned and took a step away because he really didn’t need to be ‘evaluated’ by a psych student.  
“She goes here?”  
He nodded, “she had a backpack, so I guess so.”  
The girl’s lips furrowed and Oliver couldn't tell if she smiling or scowling at him. “You mean like the one you can get at the gift shop or order online from COOP?”  
She nodded towards a small billboard for the nearby campus gift shop, _COOP on Stratton._

 _Of course_. Oliver ran a frustrated hand through his mane. _Of course anyone could buy one of those_. He really had nothing.

“Sorry about the book,” he reiterated before he started to walk away in an effort to minimise the embarrassment while he still could.  
“Wait, you have a name right?” she called out after him, and for some reason Oliver stopped.

“Felicity,” he said her name, only the second such time he'd said it aloud; but it rolled off his tongue like he'd been saying it for years.  
“Last name?” she quipped.  
He sighed with his eyes closed as he shook his head. Lady Luck was laughing her pretty ass off at his expense right now.

“There are over 10,000 people that go to school here. And you have a backpack anyone can buy and a first name that, while not on the top 10 list of this decade, is not obscure enough to be one in 10000.” The psych student reiterated, and, honestly, as she was saying it he began to laugh. He really couldn't do anything else.  
“When you put it like that,” he cringed.  
He thanked her with another smile before he kept walking. He sensed her eyes drilling into the back of his head; undoubtedly she had considered him crazy enough to study.

 _Great_.

He sidestepped another gaggle of college students before a brightly coloured A4 paper was thrust in front of him by a tall mocha-toned student rocking an impressive afro.

Oliver went to hand it back to the slender man who was a foot taller than himself, but before he could someone across the courtyard called out, “Curtis!” and the man scurried away.

Oliver looked down at the paper in his hands, holding it tight as the corners rustled in the wind.  
_Well, shit._  
Maybe Lady Luck felt sorry for him after all; because he was holding an invitation to a local art exhibition and two words stuck out, _life drawing._

_Maybe..._

The exhibition was a few days away, Friday night to be exact and he had a flight out on Saturday, so hedging his bets on the slim chance there was only one life drawing artist in the whole of Cambridge and that Felicity modelled here and it wasn’t some crazy Starling-induced whim, wasn't a bet with great odds. But, the studio wasn't far from campus according to Google maps and maybe he could luck something.

He decided to take the 10 minute walk instead of a taxi. He could use the jaunt to formulate a way to not sound like a complete maniac. He decided to cut through the campus and he kept his head low as he walked like he was supposed to be there. He passed the COOP on the right with a window display of tote bags and branded jackets. He paused and chuckled to himself after he momentarily considered going inside, but he doubted that would be any help whatsoever.

**| | |**

Felicity blinked down at her chipped nail polish and grimaced as she stood behind the counter, idly glancing up to see a few customers moseying around the aisles.

She rung up a freshman’s purchase of an insane amount of branded merchandise and kept her very practiced smile on her face. Honestly if she didn't work there she would never have dropped the cash for any of that stuff.

Curtis came stumbling through the door puffing dramatically. She glanced up and flashed him a flicker of a pout as she finished up with the customer.

“Sorry, Sorry, I know, I know,” Curtis blubbered as he slid alongside her once the customer had left.  
“You're late,” she remarked dryly. “I was supposed to meet someone in Killian Court 10 minutes ago.”  
“I was just there,” he smiled but he shut it down quickly when he realised more grovelling was required. “Sorry. I'm so sorry.”

He dove a hand into the pocket of his tan corduroy pants and after fossicking around for a few moments, he plucked out a small name badge and pinned it to his tartan sweater. “How was Starling?” he asked. Felicity shrugged non-committal. “How was the internship?”  
She groaned audibly. “They had me covering IT, so basically I plugged in computers and wiped porn from executives’ hardrives, that’s where this Masters is taking me I swear to god.” She sobbed out a slightly desperate laugh as she plucked the ends of her ponytail. _God help her._

“Still it was at _Queen Consolidated,_ ” Curtis exclaimed, putting his own dramatic emphasis on the company’s name. “Did you see Mr Queen? I hear he's quite the silver fox.”  
“I didn't. He must watch porn on his phone instead, like an ordinary person,” she quipped.  
Curtis sniggered. “What about his son? The hot playboy.”

“I wouldn't know what he looks like if he was standing right in front of me,” Felicity commented humourlessly; not even cracking a smile when Curtis melodramatically sighed.  
“Oh he could have whisked you away to Ibiza and you could have had insane sex,” he chatted away, the excitement brimming in his eyes. “Or covert sex in his office with the blinds drawn but you could still hear people outside working, now _that's_ a story I would listen to.”

She slapped her friend’s arm and he pouted. “I doubt I'm his type anyway.”  
Curtis looked visibly offended at her response. “You're everyone's type,” he argued sharply.  
Felicity chuckled as the apples of her cheeks pinked. “Okay, fine, you're forgiven.” Felicity plucked her name pin off her top and sighed. “It's a good thing I like you Holt.”  
“Not why I said it, but duly noted Smoak,” Curtis winked. “Come on you deserve a hot fancy-pants.”  
She dropped her badge into her bag. “No thank you.”  
“Still swearing off men?” Curtis quizzed.  
“Not all men,” Felicity answered as she swung her bag onto her shoulder. “Just the awful ones.”  
“So no guys in Starling worth mentioning?”

Felicity smiled, maybe the one but she didn't even have a name.  
“Nope.” She'd keep that to herself.

She rung out her till and left 5 minutes later.

_Five minutes too late._

**| | |**

Oliver stopped outside the nondescript door where the pin in Google maps had led him. It was green and heavy with a corrugated iron sign hanging from the awning that hung over the sidewalk; the word _Kojo_ was spray painted in white on the sign.

It was hardly the art gallery he was expecting, probably in part due to his upbringing of white tiles and soft lighting, with sprawling blind-less windows. On further scrutiny Oliver found a note taped to the inside of a slim window that ran down the side of the door; ‘Studio opens at 6pm. Models wanted. Friends bring cookies – Kojo'.

He smiled as he leaned back against the concrete wall; he had a few hours to kill.

**| | |**

He spent an hour or so wandering a stretch of the riverside, and nearly an hour longer just sitting on a wooden bench that someone called _Eunice_ had dedicated to _Her Harold_. The breeze was cool and it wasn’t long before the tip of Oliver’s nose was practically numb, but he enjoyed the briskness as he watched boats navigate the waterway ahead of him and he caught flashes of the joggers that ran the track behind him.

At 3:05 he finally pulled himself up from the bench, dumped his coffee cup and sandwich bag into the nearby trash and set off for the subway; he’d head back to the hotel for a shower and a change of clothes before coming back at 6pm.

**| | |**

Felicity sucked in deeply the scented air as the breeze swirled up off the Charles River. She glanced down at her watch; _3:08._ She still had some time to kill before she had to head back into campus and she decided to take the walk she took often.

Without rush, she wandered down the path that wound along the banks of the river, taking in the sights and the world passing by around her.

It was a path she took often, a sort of solace she found from the rush of everything else. She looked down the path and smiled at the empty bench just ahead; where an oak tree overhung it, shielding it from blustery winds or scorching heat, and provided the white noise of a gentle rustle.

She walked a little faster as she kept her eyes glued to the slatted-timber seat.

“Hello Harold,” she smiled as she sat down. A sigh passed over her lips that dropped her shoulders, and the weight they carried.

_Perfect._

_But three minutes too late to be something more._

**| | |**

Oliver went back to _Kojo_ and arrived around half-seven, grid-lock traffic letting him know he should have taken the subway. The ‘art studio’ was more like a club, with its florescent laser lighting and thick pillars of black shadows between them. It was practically humming with people and was entirely not what Oliver expected he would find.

Most of the crowd looked like college students or eclectic art enthusiasts; not a single person had a handbag dog or a nearly-overpowering scent of _Old Spice_ following them around.

There were paintings on the walls and a crowd had gathered in one corner of the room to express themselves on a canvas spread out over the polished concrete floor. It looked like a painter’s drop sheet, only now it was covered in an interesting mismatch of abstract and modernism (he didn’t doubt that there might be other disciplines of art amongst it, but Oliver wasn’t exactly an expert).

He walked passed a leather bench that looked like it had been ripped from the back of a Trans Am. He excused himself as he stepped over the splayed legs, but they took no note of him as they continued to discuss a pool game played last night at a place called _Johnny-Diggles._

The music was loud when Oliver stepped into the studio, but as he walked deeper, there didn’t seem to be any speakers down the other end as the club morphed into more of a ‘typical' art space.

There were a few pieces hung with their own spotlights, but Oliver was immediately drawn to only one. It was water coloured, its lines nearly fading into the white canvas. She didn’t have a face, only red lips and a cascade of raven hair, but it was the exquisite lines of her naked form that utterly captured his attention.

His eyes followed the slope of her breasts and the delicate, smooth lines of her belly until they were raptured by something else – a red string wrapped around her arm. It was bright and vibrant and when Oliver took the entire painting in, he realised her ruby lips matched – in stark contrast to the water colour.

He couldn’t help but imagine; _it looked so much like…_

**| | |**

  
Felicity walked in, shaking off the cold night air as she huddled her heavy jacket closer to her ears. She stepped over the legs of two students embroiled in a recounting of a pool game as she walked a direct path towards the back of the studio.

She passed behind a stocky figure in a peacoat, glancing up momentarily to the painting on the wall. She smiled as she recounted how nervous she had been when she had posed for that – one of her first times and with a few glasses of wine under her belt. It was still one of her favourites, despite her raven-hair phase.

She moved on into the backroom without stopping a second time.

**| | |**

Oliver felt a shiver up the length of his spine, tingling inexplicably until he turned, expecting to see something. But there was nothing but the sea of people and thrumming music he had already navigated through. When he turned back to the painting there was a slim girl with round glasses and a skewed ponytail curiously looking him up and down.

“How tall are you?” she asked, loud enough to be heard over the carrying noise.  
“6'2,” Oliver replied before his eyes travelled back to the painting.

“She's pretty huh?” the girl remarked as her paint-stained fingertips brushed back loose wisps of hair.  
“Stunning,” Oliver breathed. “Did you paint this?” he asked, but when he looked down to the spot where the girl had been standing a moment ago he found it empty; she had gone.

He tracked her in the crowd and found her religiously studying a half finished painting.  
“Are you the painter?” Oliver asked. He startled her and she looked off the canvas with wide eyes.  
“Painters paint. Artists create.” She huffed, her breath lifting tendrils of fallen hair.  
“Sorry Artist, are you the artist?”  
Her youthful face softened. “It's not for sale,” she commented. “Not yet Anyway, come back next week.”  
“No, I,” he flustered. He took a breath. “I'm looking for someone who may have modelled for you.”

She picked up her brush and plunged it into a vibrant blue. “I paint a lot of people,” she shrugged.  
“Her name is Felicity.” It was infinitesimal, but Oliver swore he saw her flinch.  
“I don't take names.”  
He didn't believe her, and he decided to push. “She's about your height, blonde hair, blue eyes.”  
She swatted the air between them with her hand. “I've painted a lot of people.”  
He sighed; he couldn't imagine ever painting Felicity and not remembering it until the day you died.

“Is there someone else I could talk to? Someone who might know her?” he pleaded.  
She shrugged. “Excuse me, gotta rinse.” She held up the paintbrush drenched in blue paint.

Before he could reply, she had buried herself in the crowd.

“Who was that hottie?” Curtis asked as Alena hid herself in his shadow.  
“Another sad attempt by another artist trying to stealing my muse,” Alena gritted.  
“Are you still on this?” Curtis laughed. “All these paint fumes have gone to your head.”  
“Shut up,” she pouted, “and where are my cookies?”  
“In the back with your muse.”

**| | |**

  
The late night air slapped Oliver's cheeks as he left the noise and the dizzying lights behind him. Another dead end.

“You looking for someone?” a voice beside him asked. Oliver turned his head and found a guy dragging on a cigarette. He was wearing both a fedora and a blazer and looked like he would be right at home in a Noir film.

“How much will the information cost me?” Oliver asked, tired and disenchanted as all fuck with Madam Serendipity.  
The character laughed as he pushed himself off the wall. “Nothing.” He put a small matchbox in Oliver's hand. “I don't know shit, but if they go to one of the colleges around here they probably go there too.”

Oliver opened his hand, the matchbox was empty but carried the name "Johnny Diggle"  
“It's a few blocks away from here but it's closed on Mondays,” the willowy stranger added.

 _Figures_.

“And you don't want anything for this?” Oliver asked, bemused.  
“Support your local artists,” the eclectic figure declared before he tipped his hat and walked off.

Just like that.

**| | |**

  
Oliver fell onto the bed with a heavier sigh than the one he'd let out the night before.

He should have just done the interim programme like his dad had suggested. Then he wouldn't have gone to that art class and wouldn't be enraptured by a girl he didn’t even know. None of this fates, or luck, or _fly to Boston; find the girl._

But that hadn't happened. He hadn’t chauffeured a handful of interns around the halls of QC. He had gone to that art class and he couldn't - didn't want to - stop thinking about Felicity.

 _Three more days._  
Tomorrow he would try again


	4. Seeing Things

Day 3.  
Wednesday.

Oliver splashed his face with tepid water from the basin before he patted it dry with a clean face cloth. He would go to Johnny Diggles that night, but that meant he had a day to use up before it felt appropriate to go to a bar.

While he could stalk the MIT campus in hopes of running into Felicity, he’d decided he wasn’t going to play into Fate’s hands and instead he was going to take the daylight hours off operation _‘Go to Boston, Find the Girl’_. He was going to enjoy a few of the sights Boston had to offer, either as a moment to clear his head or perhaps a reconnaissance mission for first date locations, either way, he would enjoy some of Boston without being fixated on Felicity... or at least he was going to attempt to.

**| | |**

Felicity stood fixing her hair in the mirror with long, singular sweeps of her brush while the moments of silence allowed something else to rattle around in her head... art class in Starling. She had taken the job for a quick pay cheque; college, even with a scholarship, was expensive, and it had paid well enough. But she had come out of the last one with more than money. She’d come out with, maybe, just maybe, a crush? Or at least whatever it was that meant she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the guy she’d barely met and knew practically nothing about.

Of course he’d been handsome, that was unmistakable, but what she had found even more endearing was his shyness, the way a blush rosied his cheeks. There was no doubt that he had women before, he seemed like the type who didn’t struggle in that department, but when he’d been caught off guard by her nakedness it was like he never had time to put up those debonair walls, the cocky sort of bravado she imagined he had, and she got to see a side maybe others rarely did.

Silly really that she was making all these assumptions based on 90 minutes of being in the same room and a fleeting conversation. But Felicity was always pretty good at reading people, a gift from her mother along with her penchant for mint chip and her impressive poker face.

She heard a rapt on the loft door and with one last fluff of her ponytail Felicity walked to the metal sliding door and rolled it open.

The rumble echoed through the open space that was a converted top floor of a newspaper printery from the 20s. All 4 floors of the brick building had been converted into apartments and the building itself was sandwiched between an old speakeasy that had been refurbished and an independent theatre company.

Curtis presented Felicity with a keep cup of coffee and she hummed appreciatively as she took it from his hands. “Marry me,” she exclaimed.  
“If I needed a green card, you’d be the first person I asked,” Curtis replied as he stepped into the apartment.

The taller of the two teased his afro in the mirror with his splayed fingers before he glanced at her reflection, “You ready to go?”

Felicity ran the lip gloss wand over her pout and smacked her lips together before she answered. “Ever heard of the third wheel analogy?” she teased.  
“I like tricycles,” remarked Curtis with a shrug.

“You don’t need me to go on this date with you.” Felicity reiterated the same point she'd made last night when she's told him of her class-less day.

He bobbed his head somewhat manically. “I do because I’m testing the friend waters first, I need a wing girl.”  
Felicity sighed before she took a few sips of coffee; the more she got in her the better chance today wouldn't suck. “Does he even know I’m coming?”  
“Yes, he even had that straight friend he was going to bring.”

Felicity groaned an incoherent word. _Hard pass._ She at least needed to give her brain a month to think about some random guy she'd never meet again; the one with the soft hands and the delicate touch. The one whose smile was ever so slightly lopsided when he was embarrassed. Then she’d move on.

Also, the last time Curtis had attempted to set her up, he was the dullest individual she had ever met. She wasn't exactly after reckless, but this guy wouldn't even cross a deserted street without waiting for the cross walk signal.

_Hard pass._

“So where are we going first?” she quipped, deciding to change the subject.  
“New England Aquarium, lots of dark corners for discrete touches,” he grinned. “Then I thought a walk along the waterfront.”

There was a great churros stand not far from the aquarium, Felicity reminded herself. _Maybe the day wouldn't be a bust for her after all._  
“If the date is going well just drop me a message and I'll make myself scarce okay?”  
Curtis stuck out his hand and they shook on it. “Deal.”  
“But you're paying the taxi fare,” she added with a chuckle.

**| | |**

Oliver stood in the lobby of the hotel, tapping his grey skate shoes on the marbled floor, as his eyes wandered over the sightseeing pamphlets. It wasn't his first time in Boston and he had very little interest in joining any sort of tour group so he finally settled on a few that were nearby; a walk along the waterfront and the aquarium. Both were within walking distance of his hotel and hopefully engaging enough that he might be able to give his heart a rest from the dull ache that he had been feeling since art class nearly two weeks ago.

Oliver Queen categorically did NOT believe in soul mates. The concept was a farce created by Hallmark and adopted by people who wanted; perhaps needed, the belief that true love was predestined.

It had always been the stoic 23 year old’s belief that this deep-seated need to believe that soul mates existed was a way of pandering to themselves. A way to negate the fall out when a relationship didn't work, 'it wasn't meant to be' forgave them of their own part they shared in fucking it up. While 'when you know, you know' led to the mind-set that you could just sit there and wait; because ... soul mates.

He wasn't buying any of it; and that had nothing to do with the fact he was fairly certain he hadn't really ever been in love. It just all sounded like a cop out.

And he was no cop out.

But the last 10 days had him questioning every single one of those previously held beliefs ... and the fact he was standing in Boston looking for the girl with the perfect blue eyes, whose skin felt like silk, and whose smile came to him in his dreams, was tangible proof that maybe he had been wrong all the time.

Maybe fate was real.  
Maybe soul mates existed.

**| | |**

**New England Aquarium**

Oliver walked the spiral path upwards, barely glancing at the glass panels and massive aquarium tank on his left as he navigated through the speckled crowd and their ambient noise. He inhaled the fresh air that pumped through the dark, hazy blue, air. It was crisp and with a hint of salt that lingered on his tongue. He stopped over halfway up and teetered his arms on the brass pole that sat atop the plank fence.

Another breath found him glancing down at the colony of penguins playing in the seafoam-green water and on sandstone rocks below. A slight smile tugged his lips as one particularly bossy penguin shunted another off the tip of the highest rock; but it faded soon after, there was little he could do to get Felicity off his mind.

_He was absolutely losing his fucking mind._

**| | |**

Felicity shuffled along one of the ground level walkways that enclosed the Giant Ocean tank and penguin exhibit. She was acutely aware of Curtis and Paul, the cute Latin American that Curtis had become almost instantly besotted with, as they walked up ahead of her. They looked cute together and she had studied the nervous way their hands brushed against each other until, finally, Paul took Curtis' hand and threaded their fingers together about 10 minutes ago. They'd remained like that ever since.

She tapped an oversized silver ring absently against the brass railing as she glanced up at the marine skeleton hung from the ceiling before she looked down just in time to see a penguin topple into the water as one perched on the tallest rock seemed to gleefully laugh.

She blinked across to the spiral walkway they were heading towards before her phone vibrated in her pocket.

Felicity checked her phone and smiled.

 **You can check out. I owe you.**  
**Xox**

She slotted her phone back into her pocket and closed the gap between her and the couple in a few short steps.

“I'm sorry Curtis, something has come up at school and I need to head over,” she apologised with the excuse she had been practicing since they’d arrived. Curtis put on his saddest face and nodded.  
“It was lovely to meet you,” she added offering her hand to Paul, who dutifully shook it.  
“You too.”  
“See you later,” she waved as she made her exit.

**| | |**

  
Oliver blinked. Once. Twice.  
He fisted his hands into his eye sockets.  
Blinked again.

 _Was that?_  
He squinted through the heavy curtain of dim lights and ribbons of florescent blue.

Across the boardwalk, talking to two men... _was that?_

He felt his chest heave and he sputtered out a breath as she started to walk away. She turned. And he saw her face.

_It was._

_Holy shit. It was Felicity._

He took three steps down the ramp but tripped over his feet, just barely able to recover. He looked to where she had been standing but she wasn't there any longer and neither were the men.

“Shit,” he cursed, garnering a look of disgust from a young mother who he apologised to with a grimaced smile before he took off running.

He saw another flash of her blonde tresses moving through the crowd before she pushed through the door out into the foyer. He sidestepped the flow of people as he panted out a breath.

Weaving through the crowd he made it to the same door less than a minute after her. He pushed hard and stumbled through the door into the bright, practically blinding, light of the foyer

He took only a few seconds to catch his breath while his eyes darted around the airy, open foyer. Shoes made noise against the vinyl floor and children “oohhed” and “ahhed” excitedly at the white carved penguins. But no Felicity.

Then he saw her, just outside the doors.

He moved like lightning towards the exit, but no one else did and Oliver found himself swamped in the middle of a slow moving summer holiday programme for preteens.

And by the time he ran out onto the red cobbled courtyard outside, she was gone.

He turned circles furiously, but she was gone.

**| | |**

  
Once the fresh air hit Felicity's face, she took a sharp right and disappeared down a few steps to walk the wharf in search of something to eat.

With only one lingering thought in her head, one she hadn't been able to shake for a few weeks; a soft smile, a chiselled jaw with a 5 o clock shadow, azure eyes... and no name.

_Just a guy._

  
**| | |**

  
“If you’re expecting it to talk to you, you might need to hold it closer to your ear,” a female voice remarked, followed by a soft laugh as Oliver held the drink menu tightly between his fisted hands.  
He glanced up to the smile of a woman a few years older than him, and standing on the opposite side of the polished oak bar at the hotel. “Sorry,” he bemoaned, unsure how long he’d been staring vacantly at the beige paper, not reading a single word on it.

“Usually they make me move loiterers on, but you seem like a kid with a story,” she continued as she finished wiping out a martini glass. The brunette leaned in a little closer and Oliver caught the name on her badge; _Lyla_.

It had been probably nearly a decade since someone had called him ‘kid’, but he didn’t take offence at it, or the way she said it with a slight smirk.

“Just a whiskey on the rocks,” he said as he settled the menu to the side of him.  
She moved about behind the bar quickly and wordlessly as Oliver took in the gauzy atmosphere of the lounge bar. The piano player was a nice accent and it felt out of another decade with it’s rich woods and decadent reds.

A low tumbler slid in front of him and Oliver inhaled the ropey scent of the top shelf liquid, watching the golden hue as it washed over the ‘rocks’.

“You waiting for someone?” Lyla asked, her hazel eyes settling on his attire.  
Oliver shrugged his shoulders in the deep navy blazer, which sat over a black dress shirt, with the top button opened.  
“Not exactly,” he chortled before he took a sip. The rich drink coated his throat with a velvety smoothness before it slid the rest of the way down. “Waiting for a ride to another bar.”  
He looked up and gave her a cocky smile that she replied to with a laugh. “Ouch.”

“Just to find someone,” he added before he took another drink. This time it was fresher and he sucked in a breath through his teeth.  
“First date?”  
“Always hopeful,” he sighed as he raised his glass.  
His phone buzzed on the bar. His taxi was here.  
He finished the drink and left a sizeable tip under the glass.

“Good luck,” Lyla commented with a tip of her head.  
He smiled; he might just need it.

  
**| | |**

Oliver stepped into Johnny Diggles and brushed the night air from his shoulders. It hadn’t been hard to find, the neon sign and the crowd of college students loitering on the sidewalk made it virtually impossible to miss. He hadn’t expected anything, so when he walked into the bar he was pleasantly surprised by the state of it. It was tidy with polished wood floors in a dark wood. Music played from a juke box , although there was a stage that, according to the poster near his head, was used for live music on Fridays. It was crowded but not so much to feel suffocating. There were a few empty tables but Oliver wasn’t here for that and he honed in on the bartender instead.

He leaned on the bar near an empty stool and watched as the tall, umber-toned man with Tsar Cannons for arms poured a tap beer with expert precision and then slid the same in front of a gleeful patron.

“What can I get you?” the man asked as he crossed from one end of the bar to the other in two and a half strides.  
“I’m looking for the owner,” Oliver replied.  
The man’s massive arms banded across his chest. “You found him,” he said stiffly.  
“Johnny Diggle?”  
“You can call me John,” the hulk answered.

Oliver nodded as he brushed a nervous hand through his hair. “I was told you know a lot of students around here.” John said nothing, but shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I’m looking for someone and I’m hoping you could help.”

When he still said nothing, Oliver sat up on the bar stool and laced his fingers together in front of him; he had all night.  
“People who sit at bars, buy drinks,” John spoke stoically.  
“Beer, surprise me,” Oliver said gingerly.  
With his dark eyes trained on Oliver, John poured the beer from a different tap, slapped a coaster under Oliver’s nose and set the mug on top.

Oliver took a drink of the dark ale and smiled; it was actually pretty good.  
“Her name is Felicity, she goes to MIT,” Oliver commented as he set the drink back down.  
He didn’t notice the slight twitch in John's serious brow.  
“I get a lot of campus kids through here, I don’t exactly take names of them all.”  
“She’s about 5'6, blonde, blue eyes,” _perfect in every way_ , Oliver explained, but John’s stance had become more guarded.  
“Did she give you a fake number or something? Because guys should take the hint.”  
“No,” Oliver lamented, “It's not like that.”

Oliver wasn’t sure how he could spin it without sounding insane so he took a pen from his pocket and a paper napkin from the edge of the bar and scrawled a note.

 **Hi, it’s Oliver, we met at a class in Starling.**  
**If you remember me and would like to get a coffee together, my number is 202 555 6789**

He folded the note and wrote her name on the front. “All I’m asking is if you know her, could you give her that note, please?”  
John took the note as Oliver slid it across the bar, but it crumpled in his fist.  
“Sure, I see what I can do,” John remarked wiry as he dropped the note into the bin.  
“You just threw it away,” Oliver sighed.  
John looked down impishly and shrugged. “You want to write it out again?”  
“Are you just going to throw it away again?”  
John leaned back and smirked.

“Thanks for the beer,” Oliver said as he dropped a $20 on the bar.  
He left the same way he’d entered, but now sure everything up until that moment was foolish. Pointless and foolish; he’d never find her.

**| | |**

  
Felicity stepped out from the bathroom and climbed onto a bar stool before she snuck her hand over the edge of the bar and stole a handful of ice.

John swatted her away and Felicity laughed sweetly before she beckoned him closer. When John was close enough Felicity leaned in and kissed his cheek. His grumpy facade melted instantly.

“You don’t work here anymore Felicity,” he grumped, but he couldn't help the smile that lifted his lips.  
“Miss me Dig?” she enthused.  
“You were a terrible waitress,” he smirked.  
She gaped dramatically, before she sucked a slither of ice into her mouth and let it melt quickly. “How is Lyla and baby Sara?”  
“Waiting for you to visit.”  
Felicity nodded with a smile.

John touched her hand and his face turned serious. “Are you safe?” he asked gently, “That guy from last semester.”  
Felicity swallowed before she exhaled deeply. “The lacrosse player? He finally got the hint. I haven’t heard from him and moving apartments helped.”  
“Good,” he said softly as he glanced down at the crumpled up note. “I’m glad your safe.”  
“One day it would be nice to catch the attention of a nice guy, ya'know,” she shrugged as she slipped off the bar. “Just for once.”

  
**| | |**

When Oliver got back to his hotel room he slumped onto the bed and groaned audibly.  
Wednesday was a bust, and the evening came with a heavy dose of reality; this crazy jaunt on a hopeless whim was at an end.

He would leave Boston in the morning, so tonight he would get another drink.

He picked himself up off the bed with a husky groan and made his way downstairs; it seemed a little less depressing than drinking alone in his hotel room.

“That’s the face of someone who doesn’t look like he found what he was looking for,” Lyra remarked as a sombre looking Oliver pulled himself up onto a stool.  
His brow raised and fell in acknowledgement but Oliver had nothing more to say.  
She poured him a whiskey and set it down in front.  
“Read my mind,” he offered with a airy but short-lived laugh.  
“So who was she?”  
Oliver’s brow curiously plucked up.  
“Or he,” Lyla added with a shrug.  
“She,” Oliver answered, “but how did you know?”  
“Be a bartender for long enough and you recognise the troubles people wear on their face. So I take it that it didn’t work out?”  
Oliver looked down as he took a drink. “You could say that,” he sighed when he set the glass back down. “It was a stupid idea to even come here, so what should I have expected?” Oliver shrugged.

He finished his drink and Lyla filled it. “You want to talk about it?”  
He didn’t really have anything to lose.  
“I met a girl two weeks ago in a life drawing class,” Oliver started and Lyla's brow hitched up towards her hairline. “Best unintentional mistake of my life,” he laughed.  
“And so, what happened?”  
“I never got a chance to talk to her afterwards, and she was gone the next week.” Oliver paused to take a sip. “The only thing I had to go on was a name, a city, and a school,” he paused to run a comb of fingers through his hair, “and here I am.”

“You know if it’s one of the colleges around here, there is a bar a lot of campus kids frequent, Johnny...,” Lyla started.  
Oliver started laughing before she got the name out, “Diggles,” he finished with a smirk. “I’ve just been there, the bartender was definitely not in the mood to help.”

Lyla popped her mouth and grabbed a pen and notepad from under the lip of the bar. “I see,” she remarked as she scribbled a note.

She finished writing and folded the note in a small square. “Give that old grump this, he’ll help you,” she said coyly.  
Oliver looked at his watch, he already had a plan and it was to leave this place and the idea of Felicity behind.

“She must have been something if you came all this way,” Lyla remarked as Oliver finished his drink.  
“She was, but...”  
She lifted a finger and for reasons Oliver didn’t understand he immediately hushed.  
“Have you ever heard about the red string of fate?” she asked and Oliver shook his head. “It’s the idea that two people are destined to meet, they are tied together by a red string and regardless of any twists of turns, that bind will never break. Maybe she’s your red string, maybe she’s not, but you’ll never know unless you try. Fate only gives us the tools, it’s up to us to use them.”  
She tapped the note she had written.

He remember the painting he’d seen at the studio, a red string wrapped around an alabaster arm.  
Fate sure was testing him.

He took the note and replaced it with a $20.

**| | |**

Oliver passed the note across the bar to John who read it with a terse lip. He huffed, twice, to himself before he folded it and put it in his back pocket.

“Write your note,” he mumbled, barely above the juke box.  
Oliver tried to contain his smile, even though the light in the bar was dim enough that he might be able to get away with it, he wasn’t willing to take his chances.

He wrote the note and folded it up before, for the second time that night, he slid it across the bar.

“If I see her, I’ll pass it along,” he said gruffly.  
Oliver watched, expecting John to ditch it in the trash a second time, but he didn’t.

“Thank you,” Oliver mouthed above the music. That was all he really wanted; a slim chance. “What did the note from Lyla say?” he quipped; he couldn't help himself.  
“That’s between me and my wife,” John gritted.  
Oliver’s lips twitched into a smirk; Fate sure had a sense of humour.

John waited and watched for Oliver to leave before he finished pouring three drinks and carried the tray with them and the note over to a table in the far corner of the bar.

“Thanks Uncle Johnny,” Alena said sweetly.  
“Not your uncle,” he replied brusquely before a smile broke his stoic facade.  
“He looks more like my uncle,” Curtis surmised.  
“If he’s adopting anyone, it’s me,” Felicity laughed.

John plucked the note off the table and handed it to Felicity. “This came for you,” he said as he handed her the same.

Felicity curiously opened the paper napkin and read the note to herself.  
**Hi, it’s Oliver, the nervous guy from life drawing in Starling. I’m not sure if you remember me at all, but if you did, maybe we could get a coffee? My number is 202 555 6789**

“Who gave you this?” she asked, a smile wrapping its way across her lips. _Oliver, his name was Oliver._

 _Just a guy_ had a name.

**| | |**

Oliver inhaled the cool night air as he rocked on the heels of his shoes while he waited for his taxi and listened to the distant wail of sirens, until he heard something else. A voice, soft, melodic, familiar...  
“You never did show me yours.”

 


	5. Making Choices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't.
> 
> Do not mention the /6 😂😂

“That sounded a lot less creepy in my head,” Felicity cringed as a nervous hand brushed down the side of her neck while her eyes squinted. “Hi,” she added after Oliver had stood, silent and statuesque, for what seemed like a life time.  
Oliver shook his eyes away from her and cranked up his dropped jaw, before he cleared his throat and simply answered, “Hi.”

Her smile turned slightly quizzical as her brows pulled together and crinkled across the centre.  
“What are you doing here?” she asked, fingers absently fumbling with the belt loop on her blue jeans.

Every time Oliver had thought about _this_ moment; about the moment he would be standing in front of her trying to explain what had drawn him to Boston on some crazed pilgrimage to find her, he had never been able to formulate an answer, a reason, that didn’t sound absurd, if not a little insane.

He’d hoped (he now realised utterly in vain) that the words would just come to him when he needed them to; but they didn’t.

“Hi, I’m Oliver,” he held his hand out towards her, “I never got a chance to introduce myself.”  
The streetlamp above them was on and doused them in a soft orange hue while Felicity curiously studied the hand in front of her; it was large, to the point where she imagined it would swallow hers up, with long, brawny fingers that sported discretely manicured nails, but what she noticed the most was the ever so slight tremor in it as he held it out – he was nervous.  
Before he withdrew it, Felicity took his hand, sure enough his hand swamped hers as she’d expected. “Felicity Smoak,” she replied.

Her hand felt tiny in his and when he glanced down, it looked even smaller. “Would you like to get a coffee?” he asked, holding his breath as he waited for her answer.  
_He shot his shot._

Felicity didn’t answer despite her lips parting to take a breath as her hand slipped out from his. She glanced over her shoulder towards the bar’s door and then back at Oliver.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice rattled and his tone apologetic. He combed his fingers across his scalp as he offered her a timid smile. “This is probably really strange; me being here. It’s okay, really.” He started to walk away but in a split second decision Felicity caught him around the wrist.

“It’s not strange,” she remarked – it probably _should be_ , but when she tried her hardest to listen for any warning bells or sirens in her well-attuned brain, she didn’t hear any. Not a single peep. “I just left my bag inside.”

His shoulder’s relaxed as he let go of the air hitched in his throat.  
“Coffee sounds nice,” she added after she let his wrist go. His hand stayed there, floating in thin air, while Felicity turned around and disappeared back into the bar.

When he was alone, Oliver inhaled deeply and had the cool air of the night full his lungs to their capacity before he blew it out with resolve. He’d done it, _he’d found the girl._

Felicity returned with the same nervous smile set across her pink lips and a black bag slung over her shoulder.

“Ready?” she asked as she lifted up on her toes and swayed for a moment.  
“Ready,” he nodded. He took one step to the left before he stopped and laughed to himself. “But I actually don’t know where the nearest coffee shop is, so,” he turned and Felicity was softly laughing too.  
“Maybe I should lead then?” she smiled.  
He smiled back. “That would be good.”

**| | |**

The coffee shop Felicity decided on might not have been the closest one, but it was the one with the nicest coffee open at that time of night and she knew the walk along the banks of the Charles River would be a pleasant one, despite the chill in the air.

Neither of them could think of anything to say until Felicity reactively shivered when a frigid breeze blew up from the broad and urban river.

“Do you want my coat?” Oliver asked, the heavy suede, navy blazer already off his shoulders and in his hands by the time he'd finished asking.

The light-knit cardigan Felicity was wearing hadn't been the smartest choice for the season, but she also hadn't planned on walking around in the brisk night.

“Thank you,” she replied softly, and almost instantly Oliver draped it across her shoulders. She plucked the edges of the collar in her hands and held them together as a thick curtain of warmth, his lingering body heat, enveloped her.

“Boston is a lovely city,” Oliver remarked as his eyes wandered over the twinkle of lights reflected in the rippling water.  
“Its location is what brought me here,” she enthused as two cyclists rode past them, a brush of air in their wake catching her hair and whipping the ends of her ponytail across her face. She laughed as she brushed it back. “It was about as far away from home as I could get.”

“Where was home?”  
“Vegas.” His eyebrow tweaked and she laughed. “Say it,” she chortled as she stopped outside _Archer Coffee House_.

Oliver smirked as he reached over and pulled open the door for her, a charming little bell dinging above them.  
“Can you count cards?” he jested as she walked inside a warm brush of air made her cheeks flush.  
“Hmmm,” she answered with a single raised eyebrow. “Let's just say I'm a good friend to have at the table.”

They ordered from the barista and took a table in the back of the quaint little coffee shop against a brown brick wall and across the way from a fireplace that was crackling with whips of hot flames. Each table in the little bespoke shop was different and the chairs were a mismatched collection like you would find in a second hand shop. Local artists’ work hung from the two other wallpapered walls and a delicate aroma of cinnamon dappled the air.

It was one of Felicity’s favourite haunts; not only for the atmosphere that felt comforting with its bygone touches, but also because they made the best damn coffee in a 10 mile radius as far as she was concerned.

“I never did get your last name?” she commented over the sound of grinding coffee beans.  
“Queen,” Oliver answered without pause.  
Felicity let out a breathy laugh as her slender fingers brushed a section of wispy hair behind her ear. “As in Queen Consolidated?”  
Oliver’s shoulders tensed and his spine grew rigid. “One in the same,” he replied just as the barista placed their fresh javas in front of them.

Felicity stirred hers slowly as she let the decadent aroma waft across her senses.  
“Funny, I interned there,” she casually admitted with half a shrug. “That’s why I was in Starling.”  
Oliver relaxed, exhaling at the same moment, before a light chuckle left his mouth. “So I could have met you without the whole need to pretend like I knew how to draw?” He ran a comb of fingers over his scalp and down to the nape of his neck.

Felicity took a slow sip of her coffee and hummed as its silkiness coated the back of her throat. “Seems like it,” she laughed when she set the ceramic mug down.  
“Speaking of,” Oliver started, a curious tinge to his voice, “can I ask you a question?”  
Another sip, her eyes trained on him as though she was easily reading him; a fact which made Oliver shift a little in his seat while he smiled.  
“Let me guess, you want to know why I do it? Why I pose for life drawing classes?”  
“If it’s too personal, or even if it’s not but you don’t want to answer; please feel free to tell me to mind my own business.”

“I’m not ashamed of it, why should I be, you know?” she started, as one eyebrow crept up towards her hairline.  
“You shouldn’t be,” Oliver assured, and she noted the genuine way he spoke.  
“A while ago I was happy being the girl that people didn’t really notice, I had school, I had a few good friends, I had a boyfriend.” It didn’t go unnoticed to Oliver that the last words she spoke were slightly more trembled than the others. “I don’t have a sob story, just a story, and that story took me to a place where I realised I was unhappy.”

Felicity steadied her breathing before she took another drink, letting the pause enable her to work through the words, and the memories, that plucked at her thoughts.

“One Friday night I went to an art gallery nearby. I saw these amazing paintings and each one seemed to tell a story just from the brush strokes, I was enamoured with the idea. That led me to a class, much like the one you attended,” she smiled as she leaned forward, elbows on the table and fingers laced around her mug. “The model came in and I just remember thinking ‘wow, to have half of this woman’s confidence’. She alluded poise and sureness. She wasn’t perfect, if there even is such a thing, but she had _something_ ,” she laughed as she gaffed her words.  
“I know what _something_ looks like.” The words floated out from Oliver’s mouth surrounded by his dopey smile.  
“I realised early into the class that I was a terrible artist, but I couldn’t shake the image of strength in the model. She came in and commanded a room, without a word. She was just her, just there. That was beautiful to me.”

Oliver listened to every single word that spilled from her mouth, and carefully noted the sparks, like tiny fireworks, in her irises.

“Anyway, one thing led to another, and I ended up working for that same artist.” Felicity watched the ripples across the top of her coffee as she dragged it closer. “I’m not the definition of perfect; my breasts are too small and my ass is too big if I listened to billboards.” She laughed as she spoke, but a few years ago she had lived those words quite differently. “But, I am me, and for people, generally,” another endearingly-soft laugh, “that go there, they see _something_ , something that moves them to create art, and I don’t know,” she lifted her shoulder in a timid shrug again, “maybe I like that feeling of confidence, even if it’s fleeting. Does all that sound dumb?” Her eyebrows pinched together and her nose crinkled up before she gently laughed.

“No,” Oliver assured her. “I won’t pretend to imagine to know exactly what you mean, but I have a younger sister and I hope she finds that confidence one day.”  
“Oh, and college is expensive even with a scholarship and it pays okay.”  
They both laughed, an uncomplicated moment that seemed to come like second nature.

“So now it’s my turn for the obvious question,” Felicity started, a melodic tone to her voice. “What are you doing here, looking for me, Oliver Queen? What is it you want?”

He answered without delay. “This.” He looked down and spread his palm out across the table. “I wanted to know who you are?”  
“Why?” Her question was bold and honest, and she had hoped his answer would be too.  
“You looked like a person I want to know.”  
“Because I was naked? Or, near enough to naked?”  
She laughed, and he did too, but his head shook.  
“I didn’t go into that class because I thought I was going to see someone naked.”  
“You didn’t?” she spoke with a smile.  
“No, I thought it was a fruit drawing classes,” he hummed as he pointed his finger towards her smile.  
She laughed loudly before she cupped a hand over her mouth, but he could still see the edges of her brilliant smile.  
“It was that smile that drew me in. I saw you through the panel in the door and I saw _something_.” Breathy and gravelled.

“You flew all this way for a smile?”  
He nodded.  
“And was it worth it?”  
He nodded again. “Absolutely.”

**| | |**

An hour and two empty coffee cups later, the two of them were back outside in the brisk, ebony evening with a net of stars above them and a flood of artificial lights from the buzzing city around them.

“Can I call you a cab?” Oliver asked. While he didn't _want_ the evening to finish, he was happy that fate had finally given him a break, and if this was the end of the night; then so be it.

With her arms woven around her waist and the wind whipping the ends of her ponytail against her cheek Felicity nodded towards the corner of the street a few feet away. “It’s fine,” she started, “I live just around the block so I can walk home.”

There might have been a bustle around them looking out towards the waterfront, but the direction that Felicity had pointed was shrouded in an inky blackness.

“I wouldn’t feel right about letting you walk home alone.” His gentle insistence came with a smile. “If it’s alright with you could I walk you, or if you’d rather not please let me call you a taxi,” he offered, his words laced with genuine concern.  
“You’re very chivalrous,” she joked as she held her hair back.  
An impish smile upturned the wingtips of his lips. “You sound surprised.”  
“It’s a rare find.” Once the words had settled in the glassy night she continued. “You can walk me home.”

Oliver put his jacket, once again, around Felicity’ svelte shoulders and she thanked him with a tip of her head and a mouthed, _thank you_ before they set off walking.

“If it’s also alright with you,” Oliver started, while his hand swayed dangerously close to hers; sets of fingers briefly touching as they walked. “I’d really like to call you once I leave and go back to college.”  
She watched as they passed under street lamps and the orange-hue illuminated his cutely-bashful smile.  
“That would be alright too,” she answered, the apples of her cheek swelling with a smile of her own.

They rounded a corner and the street was not nearly as deserted as Oliver had expected it to be as they strolled under the wrought iron lampposts down the cobbled street which felt like it hailed from an era when seldom few automobiles would have rolled along the road.

“This is me,” Felicity said as she slowed and then stopped outside a four-storey red brick building.  
He stepped to the side when a small crowd came out from the building next door and passed between them. It was then that Oliver saw the sign for a basement speakeasy next door to where Felicity had stopped.

“You live next door to a speakeasy?” he asked, peering towards the nondescript door where only a small sign gave its location away.  
“Yeah,” she answered with a chuckle, “People around here are very proud of their ‘fuck the prohibition’ roots.” She founds her keys in her bag and folded them into her palm. “I’m sorry, would you have preferred that over coffee?”  
Oliver laughed, low and genial, as he turned back towards Felicity. “No, the coffee was perfect. It’s just the bartender at my hotel suggested this bar.” His head swayed amusingly from side to side. “I feel like every step I’ve taken has been a few behind you this whole time. Like fate was playing some sort of prank on me.”

Felicity took a single, instinctive step closer as her keys embedded in her trembling hand. The thoughts going through her brain weren’t ordinarily ones she would ever consider entertaining, but she couldn’t quell them. They wouldn’t be sated.  
“Or maybe fate was just waiting for the right time.” Her words were whispered and coated in a decadently-husky tone that drew Oliver closer until their bodies were almost touching and their breaths passed warmly between them.

He tipped his head and leaned his lips ever so close to hers, but stopped them just short. Felicity closed the gap as she lifted onto her tip toes and pressed her lips gently against his. The spark was instantaneous, like a crack of lightning down both of their spines as their lips sunk together like magnets.

Her hand moved to his neck, delicate fingers curling through the short strands of hair at his neck, while Oliver’s locked snuggly to her lithe waist and steadied her body against his. Their tongues met vigorously in her mouth before swelling into his; passing from one to another before they both pulled apart, desperate for air and panting.

Their world was silent. Their eyes buried deeply in one another. Shallow breaths, dulcet and ragged, misted hot air against their lips, until Felicity finally spoke.  
“Would you like to come up?”

**| | |**

They walked through the heavy sliding door and it closed with a thud that echoed around the empty apartment. Before Felicity switched on the lights, Oliver was taken with the panoramic view of flickering city lights, not all that dissimilar to the view he’d had from his hotel room.

When she switched on the lights, the open plan room was flooded with iridescent white light that didn’t leave a corner untouched.

Despite the floor to ceiling windows that ran the length of the front wall, the apartment was surprisingly warm. Oliver followed Felicity deeper into the apartment, past the galley kitchen in cool shades of grey and matt black with an end-to-end island bar that resembled a surgical table.

The ‘living area’ was split in two, with one side hosting a large, solid wood dining table that had knots in the varnished top and was book-ended by a plank bench on one side and a mismatch of 50’s style leather and chrome chairs on the other.

The living room was a corner shelved in by two unmatched couches; one a low-profile brown suede Ikea piece, and the other a large, double-wide sofa with rolled arms and a cherry-blossom pattern.

The only floor covering was a white shag-pile rug which sat underneath a TV cabinet in one corner.

“My flatmate is a little eclectic,” Felicity chuckled as she set her keys down in an empty fruit bowl and dropped her bag onto one of the leather barstools. “Her parents own the building so I guess it’s more her apartment than mine,” she added with a casual shrug.

She actually didn’t mind the collective weirdness of it all; even the naked lady lamp on the coffee table made her smile.

“Are these all your flatmate’s work?” Oliver asked as he turned a slow crescent while his eyes scanned across the works of art that were scattered across the brick walls.  
“Yes, she’s very talented.”  
“Are any yours?” he questioned as he reactively tipped his head to study a few more closely.  
“Oh god no, I’m not really artistic,” Felicity effused, with a buoyant laugh that had Oliver laughing too. “She did buy me my own set of paintbrushes though,” Felicity added with a happy little shrug, “and I did do a body painting class once, that was…” she paused to blow out a sigh, “interesting.”

“That sounds like a story,” Oliver impishly remarked as his tongue rolled across his lips, quite without thinking.

“Drink first,” Felicity bantered back as she walked backwards towards a red-oak writing desk across the other side of the room, near the head of the dining table. “What do you want?”  
“Surprise me.”

Felicity opened the roll-top hood and groaned; all that was left amidst the empty bottles was a half-finished bottle of peach schnapps and a dribble of kiwi flavoured vodka. “So it turns out we have the saddest liquor cabinet. It’s an embarrassment to college students everywhere,” Felicity snorted as she closed the lid.  
“It’s fine,” Oliver assured her.

“I’m fairly certain there is an old bottle of absinthe around here,” Felicity remarked as she trekked towards the kitchen. “Someone left it behind,” she paused to lift herself onto the bench before Oliver rushed towards her in case she fell. “I think we put it up,” she paused mid-sentence as she stretched upwards, slapping her palm on the top of the dusty cabinetry until she brushed against a cylinder of glass. “Here!” she squealed, excited, as she pulled down the bottle of violently green liquid.

“You live dangerously,” Oliver quipped as he helped her down off the counter.  
She found two tumblers and poured half an inch into each.  
“Have you ever drunken this stuff before?” Oliver enquired, but before he’d finished his sentence Felicity had gulped down a mouthful of the potent alcohol.

“OH MY GOD!” she hissed, her taste buds like tiny volcanoes erupting as her throat went as dry as the Sahara.  
Oliver emptied her glass down the sink and filled it with water before he handed it back to her. Felicity guzzled down the water until the glass was empty.  
“So that’s why we put it up there,” she croaked as she ran the back of her hand across her parched lips.  
“It’s a bit of an acquired taste,” Oliver chuckled, “and you should really sip it.” He took a sip to prove his point and felt the 70-proof liquid clear out his sinuses as it slid like molten down the back of his throat.  
“Duly noted,” she rasped.

“So are any of these you?” Oliver asked while he wandered back towards the wall of paintings. There were both male and female models, some sombre, others bright and whimsical, they all carried something similar though in the composition and brush strokes, something Oliver found familiar, although he couldn’t place why.  
“You tell me,” she whispered playfully over his shoulder and Oliver hummed as her temperate breath brushed down the side of his neck.

He studied a few carefully, stopping at one. It was large and stood on the floor propped up against the wall. The model was nude, one leg crossed in front of the other. Her chin was down and a tumble of blonde hair spilled down over her breasts, a single rosy nipple peeking out from behind the wavy curtain of gold. Light from a window behind her bathed her sweeping curves in angelic-white, making parts of her body appear as if they blended into the same. It was playful, but restful. Whimsical in the way her hands rested; one up by her neck, the other floating just in front of her mound.

He reached out his finger and traced the sweeping line of her waist and hip through the air. _It was her._  
“This one,” he replied as he felt her move beside him.  
She said nothing, but an ethereal hum did fill the silence.

“Am I right?”  
Her teeth flirted with her bottom lip as she looked him dead in the eyes. “Maybe,” she breathed. His hand fisted at his side as he tried to subdue the desire to taste her lips once again, before Felicity moved away and turned her attention to a painting of a man’s brawny chest.

“Would you ever consider it?” she quizzed, her eyes staying ahead while Oliver stood behind her.  
He watched her head tip to the side, exposing the silken threads of her milky neck.  
“It might depend on who was asking,” Oliver replied, gravel in his voice as his breath hitched in his throat. He could smell the sweet aroma of her drifting up off her supple skin when he moved inches closer.

She turned and her hand brushed his chest.  
Her chest rose with a deep inhale. “What if I asked?”  
“Well if it was you asking,” he cooed, his voice dropping off into a whisper before she caught his lips with her own and stole the rest of his words.

The kiss was fainter than the first, like a feather tip grazing across his mouth, and it lasted only a few seconds before Felicity let him go just as delicately.

Her fingers ghosted down the buttons of his shirt, barely touching them, as her eyes grew wide with playful curiosity.

Oliver kissed her again, frenzy in this one, as he buried his fingers into her hair while his palms held either side of her face. Deftly her fingers moved down his shirt while they stumbled back towards the couches, lips still locked, wet and frantic. His shirt fell open just as Oliver hit the back of the antique couch.

“Would you let me paint you Oliver?” she breathed, her words ghosting over his damp and parted lips.  
He coiled his fingers in the end of her ponytail, letting strands pass through like silk. “What did you have in mind?”  
Felicity picked up a filbert paint brush from the caddy nearby and stroked the soft bristles across her swollen bottom lip before it turned up into a coquettish smile.  
“Is that a yes?”


	6. Painting Tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope it was worth it ❤

 

It was a _yes_ and Oliver soon found himself standing on a sheet of canvas laid out on the floor, boxed in between the two couches, in his boxer-briefs waiting for Felicity to return.

She returned with her hair bundled into a messy bun at her crown and wearing the same jeans but only an ash-grey singlet on the top. Felicity studied him for a few moments, while trying to keep her flustered smile at bay. His physique was statuesque; a Roman god carved from a single slab of marble with smooth strokes and careful precision. His shoulders were broad, the caps of them like bulbous slopes that rolled down his arms without edges. His chest looked firm but her fingers ached to discover if it was pliable too; warm even. A smattering of dirty-blonde hair that caught the light fanned out between the two halves of his chest and a darker trail led from his navel and disappeared below the waistband of his underwear.

His legs stood like trees corded by vines of muscles that sat under honey-soaked skin. And there was no missing the soft hump that pulled the grey cotton-spandex underwear taut down both seams of the front pocket; hardly surprising given the size of his hands that he was currently wringing together.

She cleared her throat and tried to focus.  
“Are you cold?” Felicity asked as she set out her brushes on a stool she had dragged over from the kitchen.  
Oliver glanced out the darkened windows, wondering for a moment whether they were putting on a show for another apartment across the street; but maybe more surprising, he didn’t seem to care. “No,” he answered her as he jostled his bare and ample shoulders to relax.  
“Good.” She looked up from her task and smiled. “Because it’s important that the model is comfortable.”  
“Surprisingly comfortable,” he intoned.

He watched her, mesmerised, as she lay out a few colours near her feet and studied them ritualistically before she plucked the darkest blue; a rich space-hued blue, and squeezed out a blob onto her painting pallet.

“This isn’t led-based paint is it?” Oliver chuckled, while Felicity dipped a wide-bristled brush into the creamy liquid.

She stirred it until the consistency became fluid. “It’s water-based, theatrical makeup, hundred percent safe,” she answered with an amiable smile. “But, it might feel a little cold.”

The first stroke of the brush carried the blackish-blue colour down the centre of Oliver's chest with a slow and even trail that faded just above his navel. His body shivered with the sensation as a breathy sigh passed through his closed lips, decadent and wet. _It was cold._

Felicity dipped the brush into the pallet a second time, delicately swirling the brilliant hue through the bristles before she drew a stroke from his clavicle across to the cusp of his shoulder, wavering it there for a languid moment before falling down his arm and tapering the stroke near his elbow.

Prickles raised up his arm as Felicity leaned closer and carefully blew on the stroke, warming the top layer of his skin.

“What are you drawing?” Oliver rasped, his bare feet twisting in the heavy canvas sheet beneath them.

Felicity didn't answer with words and Oliver wasn't entirely sure what to make of the mischievous smile that lifted her lips a little lopsided.

From just under his arm, Felicity fanned three lines with a flattened brush like crescent ribs that thinned through the crevices of his defined abs. She watched Oliver shiver and reactively she snipped the edge of her lip while her eyes sparkled with amusement.

“Are you ticklish Oliver Queen?” she asked. She enjoyed using his name, relishing the way it felt like a breath dripping from her lips and the inevitable groan that he lost when he heard it.

“A little,” he chuckled as she joined the first line with another that drew around his hip. Looking down it looked to Oliver like she was drawing half a chest plate over his torso, outlined in the rich navy hue.

She blew back strands of hair that spilled down the side of her face as her eyes tightened, carefully darkening the lines she'd already drawn with a second stroke.

From the cusp of his shoulder she drew three more lines that spread down his arm and tapered off, much like the first one, near his elbow.

The blue looked striking against his lightly-olive complexion and when Felicity was happy with the way it looked she pushed the end of the paintbrush between her lips and collected a clean brush, a little smaller in the tip, together with a brighter, sapphire, shade of blue.

On the opposite end to the darker blue, Felicity placed a silver dollar-sized puddle of the brighter tone before she used the older brush to meld sweeps of the two colours together in the middle, creating a hue that was only a little lighter than the darkest one.

Moving to his back where he could no longer study the fastidious glint in her eyes, Felicity mimicked the same gliding motion around the camps of muscles on his back. They were not as defined as the chiselled cuts on his chest, but they were still deliciously taut, and quivering, as her brushed passed through them.

She stayed there only a short time before winding the brush back around to the front. She soon evolved from long, steady strokes to small and fast ones and Oliver found himself clenching his jaw to stop the shiver that reactively blanched across his skin.

“You're doing that on purpose,” Oliver laughed as he caught her gently by the wrist.  
She smirked with her head cocked to one side. “The muse doesn't get to talk,” she pouted. She wriggled her hand free easily before she tapped just the tips of the brush against his bristled cheek.

Finally, and using a clean brush Felicity drew decadently slow and precise lines with the lightest shade, the unadulterated sapphire, creating what appeared to be accents as refractions of light balancing on his resplendently muscular chest.

When satisfied, Felicity stepped back, perching her body with one foot balancing on her toes as she tapped the end of the brush against her furrowed lips. Half of Oliver's perfectly sculptured chest was a carefully hatch of symmetrical lines and geometric shapes, rigidly sweeping over his muscles as well as delicately tracing the ridges of his abdominals.

But it wasn't finished yet.

She dropped the paintbrush to the canvas and dipped a finger in each of the three blues.

Her fingers drew scattered and soft strokes down the naked, untouched side of Oliver's chest, swirling and swimming over his supple skin as his breaths became raspy and uneven. She felt every twitch as well as the delicate warmth that radiated from him. Languid and incomplete finger strokes trickled over the defined ridges and danced in the tips between them until it all became too much for Oliver.

He leaned in close, and while they never touched, their warm breaths bonded together in a rich mist of tempered air.

“I want to kiss you,” he breathed, wisps of gravel in his voice.  
“I want you to kiss me,” Felicity replied, her voice just as gravelled.

When his lips brushed against hers, Felicity smoothed her hand up his cheek, smearing the three hues of blue across his face like tribal war paint.

But neither paused while his lips enveloped hers. His tongue explored the seam of her mouth until she opened to him and swirled her curious tongue around his. He gripped her slender waist and pressed her up his body, smearing paint soon colouring her charcoal tank.

Her hand slid through the paint on his chest, mixing into a dirty muddy blue where the lines had once been crisp, before she reached for the hem of her top.

She stepped back, severing the incomplete kiss and leaving Oliver's lips open and awaiting their return. His breathing was heavy, making his chest expand as he sucked in a breath, but it hitched in his throat when she lifted her flimsy top from her body and dropped it to the side of her feet.

She smiled as his face contorted into a grin he kept trying to contain, and with his eyes wholly on her, Felicity reached around the back of her black bra and unclasped it. It fell down her arms and she dropped it beside the tank.

“Should I keep going?” she joked, that whimsy that weaved through her voice sounded like a little laugh as she ghosted her fingers down the button fly on her jeans.

Oliver hesitated to answer, he wasn't sure why because if he was to be honest with himself he had thought about a moment identical to that one with anything _but_ hesitation. But, he'd followed her to the opposite coast and spending a few hours in her genuine and effervescent orbit had shown him that he wanted _more_ than a night of unbridled passion. He wanted her to know that; so if denying the urge between his legs showed Felicity that his reasons for finding her hadn’t been one-tracked, then he would gladly be a eunuch for the night.  
“We don't have to,” he remarked despite the throbbing protests from his cock.

She looked surprised with a crinkle across the bridge of her nose and a slight tip of her head. “You don't want to?” she questioned while her shoulders reactively closed inward, shielding her breasts; and perhaps more instinctively, her heart.

“Oh I want to,” he assured her before he nodded down to the bulge he could no longer hide. “ _Very_ much.” There was more on the tip of his tongue, more he could, and wanted to, express; but her smile made him lose every thought and every word like they were dust and the wind just blew.  
“Well I very much want to as well.” She smiled as her fingertips circled the buttons on her jeans before she shimmied out of them.

Naked, apart from her black, satin and lace panties and his boxer-briefs, now stained blue; with their clothes strewn across the room, they lay entangled on the floor with hues of blue marring their skin while the desperate sounds of wet moans languished in the air.

“Condom?” Felicity panted as her mouth broke free from his.  
He peppered her swollen lips with a few extra kisses before he answered, his voice just as breathless as hers had been. “In my wallet.”

Oliver moved to stand up but with a feisty tap on his shoulder Felicity had him on his back, nearly naked, with wet and parted lips.

“Afraid of what I'll find?” she quipped as she padded over to where he'd discarded his pants; over the arm of the plaid couch.  
“Nope,” he said with a confident pop of his mouth.  
She turned just enough to see him over her shoulder. “Good,” she replied as a smile wove up from her lips and into the apples of her rosy cheeks.

She saw his driver’s licence first and made a brief calculation that everything he'd told her that night was true, age, name, organ donor, before she opened the top slip and found a folded strip of two, _ribbed for her pleasure_ , condoms. Not past the use-by date and no apparently holes. _Tick_.

As she walked back Oliver's eyes devoured her; from the alabaster curves of her legs to the tantalising nip of her waist. Her breasts were petite but full and her nipples a sensual shade of decanted red wine. Blue grazes marred her milky complexion at her waist and around her breasts, and it was then Oliver realised his hands were coloured blue and the marks were shadows of his handprints.

Before he could ask if she wanted to move elsewhere, Felicity was straddling his lap with her hands tethered to his strapping shoulders. He lifted his head off the canvas and held himself on his elbows as she shifted above him.

His cock, erect and thrumming, brushed against her folds and, despite the double barrier of underwear between them, a blissful spark jolted up her spine. And then she moved. Slow, steady, a gentle rock like a stalled boat on the ocean.

Only her hips moved, gliding back and forth against his sheathed length with her chin lifted and her head tipped slightly back, tendrils of hair falling from her crown and floating over her shoulders and back.

Oliver clenched his jaw to stop from groaning like a porn star as Felicity continued ‘dry humping’ him while her nails kneaded into the rounds of his shoulders. But he could only hold it back for a few moments at most, and when she ground down against him with an anticlockwise motion, a very gritty “Fuck,” left through his clenched teeth.

Her head snapped forward and he saw the glazing of pleasure in her azure eyes; just thin shreds of the colour remained while her pupils were blown wide. “You don't mind if I get myself ready do you?” Felicity asked before she playfully chewed on her bottom lip.  
“Fuck no I don't,” he breathed, heavily, almost nasal in his guttural response.

She took his hand and anchored it to her hip as a smile turned up her lips. “Mmm good,” she hummed before she began rocking harder, grinding down onto his raging erection. Shockwaves gripped his cock and reactively Oliver clenched his fingers at her waist, which made her gasp in pleasure.

His hand moved with her body until she dropped at the waist and fluttered delicate kisses down the throbbing threads of his neck. Beads of precum wet his tip and soaked through the weave of the fabric, as every inch of his body was covered in a prickled heat that threatened to soon erupt.

One hand skimmed up her body and cupped her breast before he circled his thumb around her coiled nipple. She moaned against his neck, her warm kisses becoming almost unbearably molten while she continued to ride his shaft.

Back and forth.  
Lifting up and crushing down.  
Each inch.  
Every movement like electric shrapnel.

Until she stopped.

Her hand slapped at the sheet, spilling the cobalt blue as she neared orgasm. Clenching into the sheet while the blue pooled around her fingertips, Felicity stayed her body; caught on the precipice of release. She could feel her nether lips wet and throbbing and the tight pull across her core.

Confident she had stalled her release for that moment, Felicity slid down Oliver's thighs and stripped his briefs over his rigid cock. It sprung out from behind the spandex cage before Felicity caught it with her clean hand.

She looked down at her blue hand and the unopened condom nearby. “You might need to put it on,” she remarked as her hand rode up and down his thrumming shaft, keeping Oliver locked right there too; on the very edge of release.

“Not just yet.” Oliver turned them both, his weight resting on his knees and his body shadowing hers.

The puddle of paint beneath Felicity made her shiver reactively, but the thought was soon cast out from her head when Oliver bent down and pressed languid kisses down her willowy stomach, hopped between the splatters and wipes of paint.

He took a breast into his mouth, teasing the tip of her nipple with slices from his tongue. Cupping the crescent, he kneaded the same, swallowing her malleable body into his mouth with amorous fever. She tasted like flowers, drizzled with a slight-salty morning dew and Oliver couldn’t help but groan at the softness his tongue was discovering.

She groaned too, decadent and husky, through an open mouth before she stapled her teeth along the brim. Her fingertips pulled down his back, drawing claw lines of blue in their wake until Oliver dropped her breast with a satisfying _pop_ and lifted himself up.

He found a fanned brush nearby, one clean from any paint, and ghosted it down her writhing centre before lifting it off at her navel. Her eyes were wide and curious, her teeth nibbled on the very cusp of her lower lip, and her hands strangled the sheet as Oliver gently feathered the tips of the soft bristles across Felicity’s nipple.

Reactively, her body arched and her hips bucked up into his erection while her chest made a convex of alabaster skin dappled in a pink blush.

Each gloriously languid sweep was deliberate and measured, and was unlike any sensation Felicity had ever felt. Instinctively her clean hand untwisted from the sheet and slipped down between her legs, eager to settle the urge that pulsed between her legs. Oliver watched her to ardent glee as her slender fingers dipped under the hem of her panties and moved quickly between her folds.

Bending his body nearly in half he moved swiftly and buried his face between her legs; inhaling the rich heady aroma or Felicity’s arousal. It was sweet and musky and he found himself drawn closer until his tongue was flicking over her fingers, tasting the speckles of her heat that seeped through her panties.

She retracted her trembling hand and Oliver caught it gently at the wrist before bringing it towards his mouth. He could see the glistening across the tips of her painted nails as he brought them closer; so close that when his mouth moved to speak his lips brushed across them.

“May I?” he questioned, looking at her before looking back at her coated fingers.  
She smiled as she brushed a wet finger across the seam of his lips before Oliver fed three of her fingers into the cavernous warmth of his mouth. He sucked, and licked, and teased each one until he was satisfied there was no more of her salty-elixir to be found; and then he drew them out just as slowly.

“Can I be honest with you?” he asked, gravel in his tone and a smile playing across his mouth.  
“Please do,” she hummed as her hand dropped to her stomach.  
“You taste delicious,” he grinned puckishly before he pecked her mouth with a fleeting kiss. “And,” he added, drawing out the word while he moved himself down her body. “I would like to make you come first, preferably hard and most definitely on my mouth.”

“Can I be honest with you?” Felicity asked while she hooked her thumbs over the waist of her panties.  
He grinned. “Please do.”  
“I would very much like that.”  
She wriggled her panties down her thighs as far as she could before Oliver caught them between pinched fingers and dragged them the rest of the way.

He spread her legs and sluiced his tongue through her folds even before Felicity had kicked the panties off her foot. Her fingers knotted instantly in his hair, twisting down to the scalp, while he feasted on her sex.

His tongue swept in circles around her entrance while his thick digits lifted up the hood of her clit and teased the nub with tiny, rolling circles. She writhed and thrashed happily, his name falling like warmed honey from her quivering mouth.

And then she came, shoulders lifted off the mat, eyes barely open, toes curled. She came. A gush of warm spend blanching his lips and coating his throat. She came. Shaking. Trembling. Fantastically wild.

Sheathed in the ribbed latex Oliver slid his rod into her pulsing heat making her eyes fling open while her fingers knotted at the back of his neck.

The crushing waves of her orgasm strangled his cock as Oliver thrust deep inside her shuddering sex, his head riding up the smooth and thrumming walls.

He was already dangerously close to surrendering to his own climax when Felicity locked her legs around him and pushed up into his cock, taking him to the hilt. Tacky, drying paint stained their bodies as they moved together in a relentlessly dance of thrashing and thrusting, seeking the next explosion; until, on the very heels of her last, Felicity came again.

A drench of warmth and the convulsing of her trembling walls was all Oliver needed and he came in ribbons that filled the condom, and fractions of her name panting on wet moans.

He fell to her side, a limp hand around her waist before Felicity curled towards him, spasms of her back to back climaxes still echoing through her core.

“You certainly showed me yours,” she laughed into his damp arm.  
His fingers skated over the slope of her ass as he sighed, sated and happy. “Can I just say, absolutely not too small, and definitely not too big.” He kissed her swollen, crimson lips. “Decidedly perfect,” he whispered, his lips brushing against hers.

“But now we look like we murdered some Smurfs,” she noted with a laugh at the blue smears that covered their bodies.

Oliver sat up on one elbow and traced the curve of her hip with a light finger. “How do we get this off?” he asked with a small jostle of his shoulders as he chuckled.  
“Shower, with a little soap and a little body oil. Care to join me in there?” A single eyebrow raised towards her hairline as the question left her lips.  
Delicately Oliver wove a finger through a swipe of paint on her cheek. “Is your shower big enough?”  
“Oh no,” she breathed, her eyes bolted to his. “It’s tiny, they’ll definitely be some touching.”

And there was; a lot.  
As the blue-tinged water spiralled down the plughole, their hands discovered and explored each other with touches like silk to frenzied palms grappling at the other’s bodies until they got lost in each other once again, in her bed, before collapsing into an embrace in the wee hours of the morning.

**| | |**

Felicity woke up first, squinting at the blades of mid-morning sun that pierced through her curtains and bounced off the ceiling. Oliver was asleep beside her, his crinkled face smushed into the pillow, with hints of blue trapped in his eyebrows and beard. She watched him for only a few moments as her body recounted the delicious throb between her legs when a random thought popped into her head; _her mother would be proud._

She cracked a smile at her own subconscious before she glanced up at the ceiling and imagined Mama Smoak being over the moon that her college-aged daughter was having a safe, sober, and utterly consensual one night stand (that could definitely, positively turn into something much more); she hadn’t over-analysed it or carefully weighed up each action and reaction. Instead, she’d listened to her instincts and given herself over to a little hedonism; and looking down at Oliver asleep beside her there wasn’t a single regret. Not one.

She twisted her head to check the time and silently huffed at the clock in disbelief as it showed 10:05am. Her stomach soon protested it’s emptiness with an undignified gurgle and Felicity clamped her hand across her mouth to stop herself from laughing at the sudden slam into reality.

After sliding carefully out from between the sheets, Felicity found a tee and a pair of yoga pants and tiptoed from the room, in the hopes that she could order and have delivered something for breakfast that wasn’t a bowl of Frosted Flakes; the only thing they had in the pantry.

She crept down the stairs with her head slightly tipped backwards to see whether the creak in the stairs had drawn Oliver; it hadn’t, and when she reached the last few stairs she looked out towards the living room, the canvas sheet, scribbled with blue paint, still crumpled up on the floor where they had left it.

 _The Smurf crime scene,_ she snickered to herself.

“What’s so funny?” a voice peeped out from the kitchen.

Felicity jumped, a good two inches off the floor, screamed, and clasped her hands to her heart as she spun around to see Alena sitting on the benchtop eating a mug full of Frosted Flakes (bowls were part of repressed society; don’t ask).

“Jesus, shit, fuck, what are you doing home?” Felicity squealed, her voice ragged and her breathing stunted as she came down from the fright her roommate had given her.  
“I finally finished Deloris,” Alena sighed as she raised her spoon in pride. ‘Deloris’ was to be her focal piece for her showcase; and finishing it had become something of a White Whale.

“That’s fantastic news,” Felicity cheered. “Do I get my completely sane and rationale friend and roommate back now?” she teased.  
“I reserve my right to still be a little unhinged, I’m an artist after all,” her friend said with an impish shrug of her slender shoulders.  
“Noted,” Felicity commented. She opened her mouth to say something else, but slammed it shut when something occurred to her…. _Oh god._  
“Wait, when did you come home?” she cringed as she glanced between Alena and the mess on the living room floor.  
“About 1am,” Alena answered with a telling smirk.  
“Did you…,” Felicity paused to feel the hot flush erupt on her cheeks. _Oh god. They hadn’t exactly been quiet; well **she** hadn’t been._

“Hear you having sex?” Alena finished with a mouth full of cereal. She chewed and then swallowed. “Sure did, it sounded like the guy really knew what he was doing,” she continued, waving her spoon as she nonchalantly gestured. “Good on you Felicity, but what’s with the paint and whose ass print is right in the centre.”

Felicity buried her head between her hands and sighed. She would absolutely never hear the end of it.

And then Oliver came barrelling down the stairs with her sheet wrapped around his waist, the tail of the same dragging along behind him like a train on a wedding dress.

“Are you okay? I heard you scream and then I couldn’t find my pants,” he stammered as he ran towards her.  
“They’re on the couch,” Alena remarked just as Oliver rounded the kitchen and saw her.

“Alena, Oliver. Oliver, this is Alena, my roommate,” Felicity introduced with a heavy sigh. _Never, ever live this down._  
“Wait, I know you,” Oliver said as he left one hand clutching the knot at the front of the sheet that protected his modesty.  
Felicity swallowed her breath like lead with the prospect that maybe her and one of her best friends had been with the same guy; _Big ball of ‘Yikes’_. But her fears were soon allayed with Oliver’s next words.

“I came to your gallery looking for Felicity.” His brow furrowed before he looked at Felicity, looking for any sign that she had known; but she looked just as surprised as he felt.  
“Wait, you did?” Felicity quipped as the flush on her cheeks settled and she banded her arms across her chest, drilling into her friend with her eyes.

“You said you didn’t know her,” Oliver lamented, before a chuckle took over. Fate really was a dick.  
“Oooooh,” Alena laughed nervously, “You meant this Felicity.”  
“What other Felicity _would_ he mean?” Felicity countered.  
“Uh.” Alena shrugged. “I thought he was a spy from that other artist that’s been trying to poach you? Blame Deloris.”  
Felicity laughed, genial and airy, while Oliver was still in a state of confusion.  
“I’m really sorry my dude,” Alena remarked and she hopped down from the countertop. “If I had known you just wanted to pleasure her like a goddess, I totally wouldn’t have cock-blocked,” she nattered as she walked towards the lounge.

She bent down and started rolling up the canvas drop sheet as she continued talking. “Anyway, all is well that ends well,” she enthused before she tucked the folded and crumpled fabric under her lithe arm.

“What are you doing with that?” Felicity quipped as she followed Alena to the front door.  
“This, is art, I’m displaying it,” Alena answered before she rolled open the door and left.

“I’m going to kill her,” Felicity muttered to herself as she padded back towards Oliver.  
“Who’s Deloris?” Oliver asked, utterly bemused.

Felicity’s fingers feathered across his shoulder, touching him for the first time that morning and still not a moment’s regret. “I could tell you over breakfast if you’re hungry?” she asked coquettishly. She chewed her lip waiting for his response which came a few seconds later.  
“I think I’ll need pants for that,” he remarked with a roguish smirk.

Felicity walked wordlessly over to the couch and plucked his pants up off the arm of it before she carried them back to him and offered them with a smile. “I’m going to go get changed, bathroom is yours.”  
He nodded as he took his pants from her. He watched her leave, offering a little wave when she turned around at the top of the stairs and smiled down at him.

Once he was alone, and with his cheeks hurting from smiling so widely, Oliver found his phone in his pocket and typed a message to Thea.

**_Found the girl. She’s perfect._ **

**The End**  
**|for real this time|**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For serious; the end. Lmao.  
> Thank you to everyone who enjoyed this short story, it's been a blast 😘

**Author's Note:**

> Fate is a mean little bitch isn't she?!
> 
> PLEASE DO NOT UPLOAD THIS FIC TO ANY THIRD PARTY WEBSITE.
> 
> Respect what I've spent so long creating. Thank you.


End file.
